Something I'm not seeing represented in the comments: Libraries are already under attack. The library in my hometown was the subject of national reporting for

Something I'm not seeing represented in the comments: Libraries are already under attack. The library in my hometown was the subject of national reporting for the attempt by theocrats to attempt to remove gay parenting books from the library. It was vigorously protested by members of the community, the state ACLU actually sent someone to speak at our county commissioners court meeting. Its still ongoing and the fight has shifted terrain, but my point is that things like the LFL are used, again and again, as ways to undermine state institutions. When individuals and groups with a motive to attack and undermine a specific institution can point to an alternative that allows them to say they aren't actually, say, anti-intellectual, they will do that. On top of that, its worth pointing out that libraries represent the spectrum of human achievement and failure on their shelves. There's a beautiful quote on the wall in the downtown branch (Harold Washington) that goes something to the effect of "libraries are a record of both human genius and stupidity". Librarians are there to make sure that books that are records of our past, that may not have wide cultural currency, are not only preserved and defended, but accessible to the public for free. Exchanging that for an upper middle class located box of, truth be told, overwhelmingly Dan Brown style potboilers seems like a really bad call. Librarians as a group are one of the fiercest defenders of free speech we have in this society, and we subtlety undermine them when we crow about "free" boxes of mass market paperbacks and, at least in texas, where for awhile I stopped constantly to check, lots and lots of conservative Regnery-type political screeds and Protestant apologetics.