Florida: The Tampa Bay Times Reports From the AASL (American Association of School Librarians) 2023 National Conference

From The Tampa Bay Times:

Even the decision to meet in Tampa was drama-filled, with some members so offended at laws enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature that they bristled at the idea of giving Florida their business.

Arguments were waged on the organization’s social media. But the board of directors issued a statement saying that “we need to stand side-by-side with our colleagues in Florida as together we fight for the future of our learners.” Why meet in Florida, they asked. “We say, how could we not?!”

Wendy Gustavel, a private-school librarian from Rhode Island, showed up in a T-shirt that said, “I read banned books.” She proudly displayed information about a yearly reading festival that she oversees. “I’m down here supporting other librarians,” she said.

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Many at the conference offered varying perspectives about how unusual it is to be second-guessed, sometimes aggressively and in public. Seasoned veterans remembered the late 1990s, when some parents tried to ban Harry Potter books because of their witchcraft theme.

Rosan Cable, a librarian and association leader in Garden Grove, California, dealt with the Harry Potter issue as an eighth grade honors English teacher. “And I had Wiccans in that class,” she said. “We were very diverse.”

Ellie Goldstein-Erickson, now retired but a regular at the conferences anyway, recalled a student who would sit at the librarian’s desk and read a romance novel that was forbidden at home.

But the librarians agreed, these times feel different.

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