A new Texas law seeks to ban"sexually explicit" material from school libraries. A new Dallas company wants to provide a tech-savvy way for librarians to handle matters.A popular talking point among conservative officials and voters is the possibility of school libraries possessing pornographic material. to comply with a new law geared toward banning “sexually explicit” titles in schools before it takes effect on Sept. 1.
,” it lets parents approve the books their kids can read while helping school districts check their compliance with HB 900. “We need to reduce the liability that school districts have so they're not working in fear, and they can run their libraries like they need to be run: for literacy,” said Steve Wandler, BookmarkED’s CEO and co-founder.
Wandler said that libraries currently rely on the previous year’s data, but BookmarkED can provide a real-time glimpse of today’s challenged books. He thinks it will come in handy for districts, given that “it's impossible” for librarians to know all the contents of each and every title in their inventory. Officials will be able to learn why and when a certain novel was challenged and whether it’s been taken off shelves, among other capabilities.
This comes at a time of mounting book bans in Texas and in other states. Book challenges have skyrocketed in recent years, particularly for titles touching on race, gender or sexuality.last year, according to the American Library Association. That’s nearly double the 729 challenges logged in 2021.