This year’s banned book week came at an interesting time for the library profession. Last year the Fifth Circuit US Court o Appeals found that there running a public (or any publicly funded) library is an act of government speech. In their decision they said:

"Take a deep breath, everyone. No one is banning (or burning) books. If a disappointed patron can’t find a book in the library, he can order it online, buy it from a bookstore, or borrow it from a friend.”

Which may seem logical on its face. How can a book be banned if you can still get it at your local bookstore (or some hegemonic uber-online-retailer)? This of course assumes you have a bookstore in accessible distance and, of course, you have the money to burn (pun intended).

So, what’s all the fuss, right? WRONG! The Libraries Lead team is eager to talk about the nature, scope, and very real threats of banned books, bookstores, government speech, and the joys of living in a society where we are all assumed to have open-minded friends and that “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness” (Orwell’s 1984).

This special bonus episode is from a keynote address delivered at the opening of the new ESSECI Public Library in Cuneo, Italy, at the end of September 2026. “From the Care of Bodies to the Care of Minds” explores what libraries can and must become in an age of generative AI, declining trust, and profound changes in how people create knowledge. Dave argues that libraries offer something machines cannot: accountable human relationships grounded in community. He calls on libraries to move beyond repositories of information and become platforms for conversation, cultural heritage, creativity, and collective action.

Libraries have always been more than the sum of their shelves. After hours, when the last patron has gone and the lights go down, something else takes over. Maybe it's a lock-in group shrieking through an escape room in the stacks. Maybe it's a paranormal tour winding past the periodicals. Maybe it's a prom, a wedding, a midnight book release with people in costume lined up around the block. Libraries have been hosting the unexpected for as long as they've existed and some of what lives in their collections and histories is stranger than anything you'd find in the fiction section. In this episode, we embrace the season and explore the wonderfully weird, the surprising, and yes, occasionally spooky, side of library life. Because it turns out that the world's greatest keeper of human knowledge has, over several thousand years, accumulated more than its fair share of things that go shhh in the night.