Ron Charles

Libraries Are Not the Problem

A new publishing-industry study takes aim at ebook lending just as public libraries are fighting for their lives.

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Ron Charles
Sep 04, 2026
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Austin’s Central Library. (Photo by Ron Charles)

Read the Room

Tuesday morning, PEN America released a grim report detailing the swarm of attacks pushing our public libraries toward “a breaking point.” Right-wing prigs and other enemies of literary liberty have marched beyond old-fashioned book bans to disrupt author events, defund libraries, and even har…

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