Fighting for the Future of Libraries (With Jennie Rose Halperin)

24:12Jennie Rose Halperin:I have a really specific problem with most hoodies. I'm either too cold with that one or five minutes after putting one on, I'm too hot. There never seemed to be a middle ground. That is until I found Paka. Paka's best-selling hoodie is made from alpaca fiber, one of the world's most sustainable natural fibers. and it's softer than cashmere, warmer than wool, and still really breathable. That last part is what really sold me. The hoodie is naturally thermal regulating, so it's designed to keep you comfortable across different temperatures instead of just trapping in a bunch of heat. It's also odor resistant, durable, and made to last.

24:45Jennie Rose Halperin:And there's a lot more thought behind how it's made than your average hoodie. Every pack of hoodie is made start to finish in Peru and features an Inca ID handwoven by artisans honoring generations of knowledge and tradition. More than 250 ,000 people have already picked one up. I've been wearing my Paco hoodie on cold nights in Los Angeles. And as fall comes here, I'm wearing it more often during the day. It's going to be my go-to hoodie while I'm walking my dog, while I'm running errands, and probably when I'm recording this podcast too. It feels incredibly comfortable without being this giant bulky sweatshirt.

25:20Jennie Rose Halperin:And I really like knowing that it's made from sustainable natural fiber. If you've been thinking about leveling up your hoodie game, this is your sign to do it now. To grab your Paka hoodie, go to www.pakaapparel.com. That's www.pakaapparel.com. There's certain bills you look at every month and think, well, I guess that's just what this costs. Wireless was one of those for me. Then I actually looked at what Mint Mobile was charging and suddenly it gets pretty difficult to defend the expensive version. Right now, all Mint Mobile plans are just$15 a month, even unlimited. You still get high-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network.

26:01Jennie Rose Halperin:And switching over doesn't mean starting your entire phone life over. You can bring your current phone and keep your number, sign up online, and choose a 3, 6, or 12-month plan. I've been using Mint Mobile for about a year now. And what surprised me was how uneventful the switch was. It was honestly very boring and exactly what I wanted from wireless. Just an easy phone call and I was able to keep my own phone and my number I already had. And I stopped paying the price that was getting harder and harder to justify. Mint basically looked at everything that's frustrating about traditional wireless, the expensive plans, gimmicks and gotchas and made it simpler.

26:37Jennie Rose Halperin:And at 15 bucks a month, it's worth doing the math on what you're paying right now. So get rid of all those hidden fees and bills that read more like a book than an easy bill. To get your new wireless plan for just$15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash jason. That's mintmobile.com slash jason. Cut your wireless bill to$15 a month at mintmobile.com slash jason. That's it. There's no catch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months, $90 for six months, or$180 for 12 months. Plan required,$15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy.

27:15Jennie Rose Halperin:includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com for more details. This podcast is brought to you by NordLayer Browser. NordLayer Browser is an enterprise browser that secures online work without getting in the way of productivity. It gives IT teams full visibility and control over every web-based AI tool, SaaS application, and download across the organization. While making sure employees can still enjoy a seamless browsing experience. Designed for today's distributed workforce, NordLayer Browser helps companies protect access to their internal resources and prevent accidental data exposure.

27:56Jennie Rose Halperin:Go to nordlayer.com slash browser slash 404podcast and use the coupon code 404podcast10 at checkout to get NordLayer Browser at 10 % off today.

28:10Jennie Rose Halperin:To go back to the AI bit again, And you described two services that have a monopoly, a duopoly on digital lending. We have Libby, where I guess librarians pay for the licenses that they want, the books that they want. And then you have Hoopla, which is like a bundle. It's like a package deal. You sign up for a Hoopla deal as a public library and you get whatever they have in their inventory. At 4-4 Media, we've wrote so many stories about how AI-generated content is flooding every part of the internet and how that impacts Spotify, how that impacts porn sites, how it impacts any digital place where it can enter.

28:57Jennie Rose Halperin:And it has had a pretty troubling impact on both of these platforms. Do you want to explain why that is? Why are AI-generated books becoming a problem for public libraries via these platforms?

29:14The 404 Media Podcast:Fundamentally, it makes it a lot more difficult to separate the signal from the noise. So I would say that the rise of generative AI has had almost an entirely negative impact on library collections at this moment. And I'm not talking about like independent authors who, you know, will check their grammar with generative AI. Like, if you want to do that, like, okay. I'm talking about low quality machine generated materials that are flooding every single book marketplace. Like this is an industry wide issue, including and particularly library marketplaces. And so I think one of the reasons why it's had such a negative impact on libraries is that we are so reliant on vendors to provide and maintain our digital content stack.

30:10The 404 Media Podcast:And I'd probably say something similar for publishers, digital reliance on Amazon. Like if you're totally dependent or mostly dependent on Amazon to surface your titles and you're being drowned out by noise, like maybe that should be a signal that it's time to move away from Amazon. Amazon KBP, for example, says you can only publish 10 books a week, which is like a totally normal number of books for a human being to write. So this problem is both physical and digital, right? So there are the digital marketplaces. So there's Hoopla in which you all uncovered, thank you so much, due to some of our initial reporting, that there was a large amount of very low quality, largely machine generated content on the platform.

30:54The 404 Media Podcast:They have done very little to ameliorate that. They still don't publish their list of publishers or their acquisition process as to how these might make their way in there. The overdrive marketplace is now flooded with lots and lots and lots of low quality gen AI materials. It's really hard for people to sort through them and, you know, talk about being unfair to independently published authors. Like the solution that the CEO has given is like either they will label them or they're like, oh, just buy from large publishers. But We've all followed what's been going on in large publishers. And plus, some of the best books are from independent publishers.

31:37The 404 Media Podcast:And now they don't even have a chance to even participate in the digital market. But just in terms of how this affects everything and both physical and digital books, last year I was visiting a big public library and one of my colleagues had two books on their desk and they looked like normal real books. And they were chosen by an expert selector. Because library is big enough that they had an expert selector in a subject matter. And when they came to the library, they were just lists of instructions and GPT images. And it wasted the time and the money and the energy and the confidence of everybody involved.

32:15The 404 Media Podcast:And it was really demoralizing. So how are you going to find up-and-coming writers who don't have the support of major publishers and the morass of Sludge? And before everybody started talking about AI Slot, my really brilliant colleague, Sarah Lambden, coined the term vendor slurry.

32:32Jennie Rose Halperin:I love that, which predates Slot, right?

32:34The 404 Media Podcast:Yeah. And so Sarah coined this term vendor slurry. And what they're doing is they're making high quality information expensive and hard to find and serving the public the runoff of purely profit motivated publishing. The other thing I want to kind of talk a little bit about is this crisis of trust. We are in a crisis of trust for public institutions, and technology providers are further eroding that trust and taking away the agency from professionals who are entrusted to steward the information needs of their communities. This pervasive model of platformization that means that everybody is suddenly like a consumer, it's chasing profit at all costs.

33:16The 404 Media Podcast:And if we've been vulnerable enough as artists or as creators to share our creativity or even opinions with others, this way of chasing profit and of creating materials is just simply at odds with the ways that civil society and libraries really work. If you do see AI slop, very low quality or even just low quality machine generated materials in your library, public or academic, we have a reporting form where you can fill out what you've seen and where you found it. everyone's talking about AI right now. As Corey Doctorow says, AI in general, it was just a collection of technologies, has kind of turned into this like marketing term where it means everything and also nothing at the same time.

34:10The 404 Media Podcast:And obviously, you know, we have our AI Slab reporting form. We're working on model policies for public institutions to adopt. We'll have very soon coming out. We did a large survey of public librarians about AI and their current mechanisms for dealing with generative AI content in their libraries, what their policies are, etc. And so that's all coming out. So obviously we care about it, but I really don't want the issues of AI generated content to let us take our eyes off the fundamental problems that we're facing. Certain things have gotten worse. Like there is a surplus of low quality content in digital marketplaces.

34:48The 404 Media Podcast:But just because AI is everywhere and vendors are saying like these features you've been asking for years, like we're going to forego those. And now we're going to give you AI features that literally no one asked for. So like we definitely see that. But the problems that were problems before November 2022 are still there. In certain ways, they've gotten worse, but they are still problems. So I don't want to necessarily have people who care about books and literacy and mis and disinformation focused on only, I feel like there has been almost like a myopic occasionally focus on AI kind of to the exclusion of the issues that we are all still facing and that are only getting worse on the web.

35:42Jennie Rose Halperin:Yeah, I think another thing, the AI generated content problem, we see it everywhere. Something that I really appreciated about your perspective and the perspective of librarians I talked to is there is an inclination from people to say, I hate AI slop, just get it out of here. I don't want to see it. And we've reported about the issue with that is the false positive problem, right? Like you don't want to catch books that are written by actual humans and accidentally flag them as AI. But then also just generally librarians, their job is to provide access to information. And there's not an inclination to say no to any book, right?

36:28Jennie Rose Halperin:That's not something that librarians default to. You want to provide information. You want to give people access to stuff. So it is slightly uncomfortable to be in this exclusionary mode where you're trying to filter stuff out. And I think that represents an issue that we don't talk about enough. Again, when it comes to Spotify, when it comes to other platforms and places where people get access to movies, music, writing, etc.

36:55The 404 Media Podcast:I think it depends. So being a selector in a library is a professional job, right? It's something that people do. Not every library has the benefit of having a full-time selector. A lot of people do it in addition to their regular jobs. But that word selector, selection, that is what a library is. So as much as libraries, librarians, access to information advocates want to provide access to all sorts of different kinds of viewpoints and information that serve their communities and that serve the public. At the same time, it does take selection because a library cannot possibly hold on to everything, nor should it.

37:39The 404 Media Podcast:Libraries aren't warehouses for books. Why would you go to a library just to get access to low quality materials? There's plenty of that if you just search the web, right? But also, I think fundamentally, those decisions should be in the hands of communities. Those decisions should not be in the hands of corporations. Those decisions should not be in the hands of parental rights advocates or governments. they should be in the hands of the people who have been entrusted to make those selections for their communities, which in this particular case are librarians. Like there's no way particularly that your public library can collect everything.

38:19The 404 Media Podcast:And frankly, they shouldn't. The way that libraries share information about what is and what is not in libraries is through a company, a nonprofit it in name called OCLC. So OCLC, there's a lot of issues with OCLC because it's very profitable. There's a lot of issues around ownership of metadata, but putting that all aside, OCLC was revolutionary. And it was the first way that institutions could share information in terms of what their holdings were so that you could know what another library around the world had. And so that system is now online and is accessible to the public. It is called WorldCat.

39:01The 404 Media Podcast:But this system predates the internet. So in certain ways, libraries were doing this. We're doing this kind of information sharing before this network of networks, before the web took place. And I think that, you know, if we kind of think about the ways that libraries can communicate and cooperate together to create systems like the one that enables us to see the holdings of many, many libraries. WorldCat's a little bit of a misnomer because it is like largely libraries in the US, although it's gotten a lot better. But yeah, to just have these systems that are much more cooperative, that are much more open in terms of resource sharing, because that is the other thing that libraries do is resource sharing.

39:53The 404 Media Podcast:Like if my public library can't have it, then maybe a public library down the road can have it. And being able to share those resources is really, really crucial to the way that libraries work. And these digital marketplaces that we're dependent on as renters do not allow us to do that kind of resource sharing that we might have done in the physical world.

40:17Jennie Rose Halperin:Speaking about what libraries choose to hold, there is a library I walk by almost every day here. And through the window, I can see a shelf that is just stacked with Nintendo DS games that people can borrow. And it always makes me laugh because I think it's just cute that they have it. And then also, I remember driving my bicycle to the public library to read comic books that they had. That was so fun. That drew me into the library. And the idea of having video games there would have blown my mind as a kid. But it's becoming common, right? It's like, you can go there, get DVDs, get movies, video games, and so on, music.

41:00Jennie Rose Halperin:I'm wondering just how you think about that in terms of what should libraries expand their collection to include? Do you have some sort of inherent favoritism for books? Where do you draw the line? Is the library a place where people talk about you should go there to get tools that you can get? Where do you draw the line about what libraries should hold? Because they can't hold everything, right?

41:23The 404 Media Podcast:I think some of it is community dependent. I live in Durham, North Carolina, and they have a seed library, which rocks. We have an incredibly big home gardening community. And as a member of the home gardening community, I love the seed library. And I love that so many of the Durham Public Library talks are about like birds or different kinds of things that you might find in your natural environment. But that's because it's reflective of the community in which I live. Right. On a really personal note, I grew up incredibly reliant on the library for a number of reasons. One of the reasons was that my mother was chronically ill.

42:00The 404 Media Podcast:This is sort of my origin story to it. My mother was chronically ill. And for her going to the library most days, that was her outing. These were her friends. These were the people who she got to see every day. And the town where I grew up really held us and really supported us as a family, even as we were going through a lot of financial issues. And we wanted to watch the best movies, but a lot of times we couldn't afford to go to the video store. So I watched movies from the library. We would order the DVDs, we would get whatever was there. It is why I was able to build cultural understanding as a young person, was because I could, you know, borrow CDs.

42:40The 404 Media Podcast:I was 16 and like read about Pavement and Rolling Stone and I could like get Crooked Rain from the library. And that was so rad that, you know, this like blew my mind of a whole new world. And I want that for other people. I want that for this generation and I want that for the public still. And I do think that for a lot of us, like our formative experiences in libraries as young people have shaped the way that we think about libraries today. But to actually answer your question, I think there's a little bit of a tension here. I think both that, you know, libraries can't be expected to be everything to everyone.

43:19The 404 Media Podcast:Like they can't be a daycare and a homeless shelter and deliver Narcan and like, you know, provide technology help and lend books and lend tools and lend this and lend that. And I think on a lot of times, because of the way that our public institutions have been demolished by certain policies over the last 20, 30 years, like they're expected to. And I don't think that's fair. I remember back in 2016 when Trump was first elected and the problems of mis - and disinformation became very front and center and everyone was like, librarians will fix it. And it's like, but how? Like, how? How are you really expecting librarians to fix it other than like having that be a really adorable soundbite?

44:06The 404 Media Podcast:Like, And that's not to say that librarians do not address mis - and disinformation in their communities every day because they do. And that is a fundamental piece of librarianship is providing access to information and meeting the information needs of communities. That being said, in terms of different collections, like I have been really, I'm really excited every time I see a new kind of collection that libraries are lending. My colleagues, Shannon Mattern, writes a lot about this, of the different ways that libraries can fulfill the needs of their communities, the different kinds of programs that they're running, the different kinds of things that they're lending.

44:44The 404 Media Podcast:Another project that I really love and have the great fortune to be able to participate a little bit with is Terry Paris's Library Newsroom Project, which works with communities to literally build newsrooms that are self-sustaining within libraries for community members to report on their neighborhood. and his work is just so invigorating because it is a way to bring people to the library and engage them in a project that is exciting and dynamic and that they want to stay involved with over the long term. So these are the kinds of projects that I think are exciting, but in terms of simply like lending materials, like if your community wants a tool library at your public library, like awesome, that's great.

45:35The 404 Media Podcast:one of the first projects we did at Library Futures was we partnered with iFixit and we ran a survey of technology needs within public libraries. And anyone who answered got sent a fix-it kit to lend out. And these are the kinds of things that I think are just great, like more fix-it kits in public libraries, more video games, more tools. And I'll tell one other funny story, which probably won't make it in the podcast, but my...

46:04Jennie Rose Halperin:Please do. Please do.

46:06The 404 Media Podcast:I lived in Boston for a number of years. And my ex-husband taught at a high school across the street from the main branch of the Boston Public Library. And he was finding that none of his seniors were in class in seventh period. And the reason why was because the video game room in the Boston Public Library opened during their seventh period. And, you know, the Boston Public Library was the library for the school. And the teachers wrote an email to the library and they're like, hey, could you maybe just open 45 minutes later for our student? We love that they're going there. However, it would be really helpful.

46:50The 404 Media Podcast:And the librarians wrote back and they were like, we're for everyone. You know, we're not just for your students who might be skipping class. we're for everyone and so no we will still open this uh during your your seventh period and you know that's what happens when you're serving a whole city yeah uh i think that's such a good

47:08Jennie Rose Halperin:point about libraries can't be everything uh i have a almost three-year-old and like one big activity is like there's like a kids hour at the library and like all the parents show up because for a lot of them it's like the only option to to have any sort of child care when we were at motherboard when we were at vice we wrote about the post office when it was uh coming under attack of the trump administration and people really rallied behind the post office and all the wonderful things that it does for a community like everybody remembered all of a sudden it's like yeah libraries can't be everything the post office can't be everything but i think it does speak to there is a deep, deep desire and vacuum for any sort of community-oriented or collectivist institution or organization that we just don't have enough of them.

48:02Jennie Rose Halperin:So we really over-rely on what is there.

48:05The 404 Media Podcast:And you should... Libraries should offer story time. And I went to story time at the library as a kid. And God bless everyone who does story time at libraries. They have far better patience than I do. And I think that's wonderful. I think there's sort of a difference between asking libraries to fulfill information needs, to fulfill needs that they have historically filled in communities and thinking of new ways that libraries can fill those information needs and can provide that kind of community space and the kind of like support to different people who might live in a place. I think there's sort of a difference between that and asking any public institution to fulfill every single role.

48:50The 404 Media Podcast:There's this paper called Vocational Awe and Librarianship by the scholar Fobhazi Atare, who unfortunately recently passed away. They describe it as a set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique. And so one of the examples that she gives is that there was a wave around the time that she was writing this article that librarians should all be trained in how to administer Narcan. And, you know, she's not saying, like, don't learn how to administer Narcan, but there is this question of what is the role of a public institution in American life right now?

49:44The 404 Media Podcast:What are sort of the boundaries that make sense for professionals? What are the boundaries that make sense for communities? And what can and cannot public institutions do when, you know, frankly, I think a lot of people feel like so much of their lives are commoditized or consumer driven. And I think that one of the reasons why folks have been so focused on libraries recently, either for good or for bad, for censorship reasons or for, you know, the like lowercase L of low values reasons is because, you know, I think that, again, everyone has said it. Like there aren't very many spaces where you walk into a room and you are not expected to buy anything and you are just sort of presented with, frankly, the riches of human thought.

50:38The 404 Media Podcast:And that is really special. And I think that particularly for public librarians, like the kind of work that they're doing in order to meet and exceed the information needs of their communities is wonderful. And so for us at Library Futures, like we want to make sure that when participating in digital life, which is inevitable and also crucial at this moment, that libraries are given the same kind of fair shake or even a better ability. So we really want to make sure that in digital spaces that libraries get a fair shake and that they get the ability to advocate for terms that are beneficial for their patrons and for their communities and for the information needs of the spaces in which they work.

51:35Jennie Rose Halperin:we have a grant that we got from muckrock that we're very grateful for and we have a reporter that we work with a lot called claire woodcock who writes about the censorship that libraries are facing from all these small activist groups conservative activist groups i think we talked about uh more interesting things we don't have to like go through all of that right now but i guess our readers are very well aware that this is happening do you have any advice for what like an average library patron or lender can do to support libraries and librarians in this time when they're facing this pressure and then also maybe in the same breath like what can they do to support you and library futures uh thank you so

52:28The 404 Media Podcast:much. Yeah. So first off, Claire rocks. I've known Claire for real. So there's a lot that community members and readers can do to support libraries in this time. I think sometimes it's hard to know, you know, when you're being bombarded on every side by mis and disinformation and threats to democracy and corruption and just the climate issues and data center issues, like it sometimes feels really overwhelming. But in this particular case, like supporting libraries holding the line on free speech and free expression, I do think is very possible. There are a number of different coalitions that people can get involved with, but just on like a very basic, what can you do is, I know it sometimes feels a little bit like a cop-out to say like, write letters to your legislators, but also pay attention to your city council meetings or your town council meetings.

53:28The 404 Media Podcast:Pay attention to when boards are up. Run for your library board for sure. Join your friends of the library. If you care about free expression, like I'll just be blunt about it. Like that's what the other side has done for many, many, many years is they have joined these boards and they have taken them over and they have shaped them in the role of the minority in their image of a theocratic, censored, anti-trans, discriminatory model. So run for your library board, speak out at your city meetings, organize with people. If you are in a book club of any sort, maybe think about committing some of your book club time to free expression, send letters to your local congress people.

54:16The 404 Media Podcast:And if you want to get involved with any of the many Right to Read coalitions, there are spaces. I mean, there are some people who we get to work with at places like Texas Freedom to Read where they are moms who are just really committed to the values of education and to the values of letting their kids read what they want to read. And I just think like parents are a really, really important group of people in this fight. But even if you're not a parent, I'm not a parent, there are so many different ways that you can get involved in this struggle. And even just like, if you're like, you know what, not for me, public action, not for me, support your librarians, go to your library, use your library, check out those books.

55:01The 404 Media Podcast:You can play our game and you can kind of gain empathy for what some folks have been going through. And in terms of how you can support Library Futures. We are a 501c3 nonprofit, so you can donate if you want to. Other ways that you can support us. We do a lot of public events, so you can sign up for our newsletter online. We occasionally do in-person public events, and you can read our reports and use our resources. And if you know any student who's interested in information access, you can encourage them to apply for our internship program. Or if you have a really, really great idea, apply for our research grants.

55:38Jennie Rose Halperin:I'm sure some of those students are listening. So do check out Library Futures. I believe by the time this is up, you might have a new website.

55:47The 404 Media Podcast:We will have a new website.

55:48Jennie Rose Halperin:Yeah. So check that out. And yeah, I think we'll leave that there. Jenny, thank you so much for coming on and thank you for the work you do.

55:57The 404 Media Podcast:Thank you so much. Can I actually ask one question? Yes. There's only one thing we missed that I did want to actually touch on if it's okay.

56:04Jennie Rose Halperin:Please. Yeah. Yeah.

56:05The 404 Media Podcast:So Emmanuel asked me a question about the rise of censorship of digital resources, and I really wanted to make sure that I highlight it. We did a report back in 2025 called Neo Censorship in U.S. Libraries, which is about how database bans are really underreported. And the way that we sometimes describe it is like handing a library a list of books to ban or types of books to ban. It's totally insidious. The fact that you can go to any one of these research databases, which students are often highly, highly, highly reliant on. One of these databases we looked at is in 49 out of 50 states. And you can basically ban words so that these kinds of topics do not come up.

56:53The 404 Media Podcast:one example just to kind of put a point on it is like for example in one jurisdiction the word breast was banned which meant that then students could not do research on breast cancer anymore in their school maintained databases both that they were paying for and also that they were encouraging them to use it would just be blank and so what we're finding is that in certain ways These database claims, these database challenges, and the censoring of digital resources mirror a lot of the censorship claims that you see in physical materials, but in a lot of ways, they can be really, really, really broad-reaching in a way that has been incredibly surprising.

57:40The 404 Media Podcast:So like one of the quotes that we have in our report from one of our research participants is that a lot of these censorship advocates started with databases. And then in their words, they realized that no one knew what a database was. So they pivoted toward books because you can go to a public meeting and hold a book up. Whereas with a database, it's like a lot harder to explain. Right. So what we found is that most of the claims obviously are bogus, that most students are using databases in normal school contexts. Like, why in the world would a student use a school database to search for anything untoward?

58:24The 404 Media Podcast:It's unclear. And there are years and years of research from Utah demonstrating this because they published their student search results, which has its own privacy implications. but they did publish them and it is very clear that students are using them for normal school use. It's causing a lot of self-censorship. It has a chilling effect on libraries. So they won't buy certain databases if they're concerned that these packages might contain information that might make them targets or they're putting what we're calling stop words on the databases. So like students can't do legitimate research because they run into blank results a lot.

59:01The 404 Media Podcast:Um, it's created a situation of, uh, local controls, um, which is like overly restrictive and, uh, words and filtering that limit minors access to critical information, like particularly in terms of health and race. This is an influence campaign that escalates really fast. So a lot of times people are, this is actually very similar to physical books, but like people who don't live in the district or who don't live in the state are using their influence to escalate and terrify institutions, libraries, schools in high volume. Just a very, very few people. And they're using social media to intimidate people, which circumvent established policies and procedures that escalate.

59:47The 404 Media Podcast:And the last is that they claim that even providing resources to minors is harmful. So the claims of, they're claiming that there's pornography and library materials, in particular database materials. This is based on discriminatory ideology. And what we were finding is that students are really the most powerful change agents when it comes to advocating for or against legislation that could impact library collection.

1:00:20Jennie Rose Halperin:Yeah. Again, if you want to learn more about what people try to classify as inappropriate for children. I recommend all of Claire's reporting on this subject. It's obviously mostly entirely bogus claims about any content book that is remotely LGBTQ, remotely about sexuality, even stuff that is just not white, not from a white perspective, is often the stuff that is flagged this way. So really, really important issue that we continue to cover. And obviously, Library Futures has done a lot of good work on. So check that out. And Jenny, thank you again.

1:01:03The 404 Media Podcast:Thank you.

1:01:03Jennie Rose Halperin:We will stay in touch.

1:01:06The 404 Media Podcast:Awesome. Thanks so much.

1:01:09Jennie Rose Halperin:As a reminder, 4-4 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to 4-4 Media and directly support our work, please go to 4-4media.co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad-free version of this podcast. You'll also get the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is produced by Alyssa Metcalf. Another way to support us is by leaving a five-star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really helps us out. This has been 4-4 Media. We'll see you again next time.

1:01:54Thank you.