Booksology 
There was an error in the main text, so I edited it from the original text. New York Public Library (NYPL) have We worked with the Books Unbanned program in Brooklyn. It was my fault that the last line wasn’t clear. NYPL is not part of the Books Unbanned digital card program. This means we are not providing digital access to our collections to young people across the country. NYPL has collaborated with Banned Books, including the Fall 2024 National Day of Action and Freedom to Read Rally. You can read the latest version here.
literary activism
In addition to the news available, we also include tips and tools to combat censorship and other bookish activities.
However, nothing has been edited or changed.
At last month’s American Library Association conference, I started hearing stories of censorship at NYPL from various sources. I did exactly what I do with every story I hear worth sharing. I made a list of keywords that came up in the conversation and started digging. I scoured the library’s website for information on how to file a FOIA, known as New York State’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). As a publicly funded institution, it seemed like the most direct way to find information was for it to be written down or recorded in some way. Public records are tools available to anyone from publicly funded institutions. Laws vary from state to state, and some records requests may involve a small fee to the requester, depending on the size and deliverability of the request, but in most cases anyone, from anywhere, can request records from a public agency for any desired purpose.
I was looking for a way to FOIL NYPL and found out it’s not possible. Despite receiving public funding, NYPL is actually registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The library is funded by both taxpayers and private organizations, and works in partnership with the city rather than as an administrative department of the city.
According to a 2003 legal memo, the library itself is not subject to the FOIL Act because it participates and registers as a non-governmental nonprofit organization and not as a government department.
I’m not the first to discover that, nor will I be the last. America’s largest municipal public library is not subject to public records laws.
Because of this, I was stuck trying to verify what I heard at the conference. But my search for insight and context for what I was hearing didn’t end there. Has anyone published anything about this? We know it takes a lot of courage for anyone to share their story of censorship, but that’s doubly true for library workers who fear they will face retaliation or loss of job for speaking out by blowing the whistle.
So when this carousel posted by the Prison Library Support Network was sent to me several times and people asked if I could see it in the FOIL records, I had to do two things. The first was to tell them that libraries are not subject to the FOIL law and therefore cannot search public records. The second task was to decide whether to include a link in the weekly roundup of Literary Activism magazine.
I decided to include it because of how well the content of that carousel matched some of what I had heard, because it came to me from several reliable sources, and because it was an action-oriented carousel asking people who care about the library, its work, and its employees to speak up about issues within the library. This is the same process I use when including links in summaries. It is also the same process we use when writing articles that quote library staff without disclosing their name or location. The carousel was a call to action and aligned with the goals and objectives of the column.
Literary Activism’s weekly link roundup began in 2021. Sometimes I’ve been sent a link to share as a response, or sometimes I’ve found a reply to an article later in the week and included it as a follow-up.
Within hours of last week’s literary activism link summary post being published, a spokesperson for NYPL’s public relations department sent an email (to my personal email, quite unusually) expressing frustration at not being able to respond to a request for comment and requesting a phone call “as soon as possible.”
Public records are powerful because they don’t add a special twist or narrative to the documents and discussions that take place in public institutions. Public relations shows off the great things your organization is doing and serves as a point of contact for questions about those things and about the organization itself. Official documents are for the public to evaluate. Public relations is for public consumption. That’s why I didn’t reach out to NYPL’s communications team. The information was that it was not possible to request public records.
I made an offer to share what NYPL had to say in response to the carousel link. The spokesperson then requested that the link be removed and asked for my phone number again. I didn’t remove the link, but re-suggested a link to the public answer they would give.
To be clear, we do not aggregate or censor links to enable individuals or entities to respond to information linked to these sources. Answers are included in subsequent literature activity link summaries as appropriate.
On Saturday afternoon, a NYPL spokesperson emailed an unlinkable statement denying the merry-go-round claims shared by the Prison Library Support Network. A spokesperson for NYPL News did not link to the statement posted on its press information page. It was only sent as a text to my personal email.
NYPL is not subject to FOIL, which means we cannot ask to see email discussions or documents used to make decisions related to book listings. It means not knowing where and how leadership is directing frontline staff to act, say, and behave when representing the library.
Instead, you should contact the Press Office, but the Press Office is under no obligation to provide you with the records you wish to view. News organizations are not required to view these emails as they are not obligated to do so.
It is not the policy of Book Riot or most media outlets to contact news outlets or public relations teams in the absence of a FOIL. they are not the same thing. They serve distinctly different purposes, and in situations where the possibility of censorship is raised, news organizations are working on behalf of the best interests of the institution rather than on behalf of the people it serves.
Depending on the link regarding the possibility of censorship within the organization, calling for censorship of the press is certainly a choice. If I were to ask them about this, I would get an answer from a public relations point of view, not a public records point of view.
I am still waiting for an official statement from NYPL which I will share as a follow-up link, but I have made one correction. As mentioned above, NYPL cooperates with the Brooklyn Book Ban program and specifically participated in the Fall 2024 National Day of Action and Freedom to Read Rally.
What I wasn’t wrong about is that since there is no ability to stop NYPL, there is no way to substantiate what is shown on the carousel, and no way to refute it.
