This guy comes up to me

A colleague of mine says that what I should've written is a post about how libraries have to manage "free" access. He thinks that people don't think of librarians as freedom fighters because they think of us as bun-haired shushers, more interested in restricting information than letting it go free. Talk about how library rules ensure equal access to ideas for the whole society, he suggests, and you can talk about how librarians guarantee freedom of expression over the long haul.

An interesting idea, and really, the kind of think I'm hoping you'll discuss with your local Friends of the Library or Library Board. And a pretty good post for National Library Week.

And then he told me how "books don't really get banned anymore."

Tell Gordon Lee, on trial in Georgia for letting a minor get a comic book with a non-sexual picture of a nude Pablo Picasso in it.

Tell the U.S. Customs Service, which trampled the basic rights to political speech in an attempt to protect corporate property.

Tell Rep. Gerald Allen of Alabama, who wants it to be illegal for state funds to support "positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle."

Tell the F.B.I., which apparently has run out of violent criminals to catch and has usurped the authority to define obscenity, which Miller v. California relegated to the states.

It's nice to sit in my ivory tower, where we talk strategy and most of the battles are won anyway, and if they weren't, I could quit and go work somewhere else. But the First Amendment I believe in is not yet a given. It's still a work in progress. It's not consistently protecting the folks out on the front lines of the bookstores and publishers and public libraries yet.

Outside, it's America.