Will Kindles become kindling for bonfires, too?

You may remember the scramble a little earlier this fall as Iowa public school districts scoured their library shelves, looking for books that might offend Iowa legislators to remove. One of the lines used by those favoring the effort to erase LGBTQ+ people, people of color and others from the collective consciousness of their young was, "Aw shucks, those books still will be available in public libraries."

So a couple of reports were issued last week, one by the American Library Association and the other by PEN America, noting an uptick in efforts to coerce public libraries into removing the same volumes from their shelves.

The line this time, "Aw shucks, these books still will be available online and in book stores."

Here's a link to a New York Times piece headlined "Book Bans Are Rising Sharply in Public Libraries" that summarizes the two reports and is worth reading. I've "gifted" the story to my Facebook timeline to avoid the pay wall for those who have exhausted their access to free Times articles.

Those who fear the clarifying effect of information's free flow have always feared books --- and in a way its reassuring in an increasingly digital age that they still do. Book-burnings often follow book bans, but what about all those Kindles (and similar products)? Will they become kindling for bonfires, too?