Librarians Unite

This year’s ALA conference, held June 26-30 in Philadelphia, convened librarians and other bookish minds to tackle some of the day’s biggest challenges, including the many political threats to the freedom to read. Meanwhile, overseas, the Spanish publishing industry is continuing to grow apace while U.K. publishers are increasingly looking to North America as a font of talent and IP. With the latest Supreme Court ruling, yet another check on the Trump administration power has been removed, according to the New York Times, paving the way for Trump’s efforts to defund the IMLS, the NEA, and more. Relatedly, the Library of Congress is once again under fire, this time from congressional appropriators looking to slash its budget. In better news, a new law in Maryland prohibits the removal of books from school libraries without due process, reports the Baltimore Banner. More authors of Boys’ Love fiction in China have been arrested amid the government’s ongoing crackdown on the genre, reports the New York Times. Writers Beware walks authors through what happens if their publisher goes bankrupt, and the New Yorker considers the demise of college writing at the hands of AI. Paste makes the case against sprayed edges. And crime novelist Jane Stanton Hitchcock has died at 78.