The University’s Bateman Competition Team hosted a “Thank a Librarian” event at the Student Center on Wednesday for students to write thank you notes to librarians.
The team is a part of the Public Relations Student Society of America competition, and this year, its client is EveryLibrary, a group that builds support for libraries in America. The team is operating under the campaign slogan “Save Our Stories.”
“They have asked us to gather names and emails for their email list, to expand their audience past what their target audience is, which is really fun and neat,” said Addie Nails, a junior majoring in public relations.
At the tabling, students were encouraged to guess the number of cotton balls inside a glass jar, which represented the nearly 400 books that have been challenged or even banned since 2022. The count includes childrens’ favorites such as “Charlotte’s Web” and the “Harry Potter” series.
The students running the campaign expressed concern over this censorship.
“The library funding is dwindling, and here in Alabama, there are two bills that are going through the state legislature that could potentially harm libraries,” Nails said.
House Bills 385 and 425 are the two bills that were introduced to expand the state’s obscenity law to cover public and school libraries, and to prevent libraries from joining the American Library Association, respectively.
The Bateman Competition Team previously hosted a “Save Our Stories Exhibit” and library-inspired trivia at Loosa Brews. The next event will be on Wednesday at Druid City Brewing at 7 p.m.
“I spend so much time in the library,” said Annie Laye, a sophomore majoring in kinesiology who stopped by the event. “Without all these people I would not know where to go in the library, what to look for, what research to do.”
