Book Surfaces 120 Years After a San Francisco Library Lost Almost Everything; The New York Times, June 1, 2026

 Adeel Hassan, The New York Times; Book Surfaces 120 Years After a San Francisco Library Lost Almost Everything;

"Randall Tarpey-Schwed, a book collector and library member, found the book on a website that deals in, among other things, rare books and collectibles. How it reached that previous owner is unknown.

Mr. Tarpey-Schwed said he was curious whether any books had survived the 1906 earthquake and fires, by virtue of having been checked out.

“There was no place to return the book, at least for a while, or to reapply Gertrude Stein’s famous quote, there was no ‘there there’ to return the book to,” he said.

“The book is not worth much monetarily,” Mr. Tarpey-Schwed said. “It is, after all, a soot-stained book with a lot of old library stamps. But as a survivor, it is priceless, and I knew immediately I wanted to return it to the library.”

The book’s author, Bret Harte, might have been a library member, Mr. Cooper said. Many writers and artists have been members, he said, but full membership records from before the earthquake are gone."

Missouri court strikes down 2022 law that pulled library books off shelves; Missouri Independent, November 18, 2025

 ANNELISE HANSHAW, Missouri Independent ; Missouri court strikes down 2022 law that pulled library books off shelves

"A Jackson County Circuit Court judge struck down a state law criminalizing school employees for supplying “sexually explicit material” to students, ruling it unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in a five-page decision Monday.

“This is a real victory for all library professionals who are trained to select age-appropriate, developmentally appropriate material for students in both public and private schools,” Gillian Wilcox, the ACLU of Missouri’s director of litigation, told The Independent. “It is a real insult to their training and professionalism for the government to think that it knows better what books belong in those schools, and it’s an insult to parents as well.”

The now-void law, passed by Missouri lawmakers in 2022, expanded the state’s regulations on pornography to create the offense of providing explicit sexual material to a student. It applied only to those “affiliated with a public or private elementary or secondary school in an official capacity.”

The law is part of a larger trend placing higher scrutiny on what books are offered by libraries and schools. In Missouri, efforts earlier this year to place new restrictions on digital libraries and expand the officials who could face prosecution were debated but did not pass."