Welcome back to the Banned Library, the centerpiece of the town square of Bannville, MS, a small town nestled deep in the piney woods of Mississippi.
The creation of the Geraldine Godson Banned Memorial Library and Farmer’s Market was based on a bet. Books as a whole were not easy to come by to the gentle loggers that founded the area, so when Geraldine Godson bet Theodore "Ted" Banned a library could not only thrive in the fledgling town of Bannville but become a cultural Mecca that would draw scholars from miles around, Ted scoffed. The bet was simple: Geraldine could found the library with money given by the Banned family and at least three fourths of the population must have a library card at the end of three months (about 300 counting county and city population). If she won, Geraldine could keep the library with additional funds given by the Banned Family for all time. If he won, Geraldine would marry Ted.
With the terms agreed, the library was opened on the August 7th, 1879, just in time for school to start.
Geraldine and Ted had a Christmas wedding.
The two of them grew to love each other deeply, so Ted kept the library open while Geraldine was its first director. Then she was killed by a panther while hiking. After her death, Ted took over as the director of the library but knew nothing at all about how to run a library so he turned the front of the building into a farmer’s market. As folks came every Sunday afternoon after church to trade sweet potatoes and blueberries, they would ask about all the books in the back of the building.
The library began to take hold in the community and additions were made until the building and market stands burned in 1924. The present building was then constructed and has stood proudly behind the weekly farmer’s market ever since. A member of the Banned family has always held the position of director of the library, MLIS or not.
The formation of an online presence of the library was started in 2010 by the last known descendant of the Banned family, Evan Banned. After years of patrons asking when the library would have an online presence, Mr. Banned stopped ignoring them and, using the last of the family fortune, created a website that some have deemed the worst library blog on the Internet. This is that blog.
Growing beyond the scope of the creator’s original design (an Internet place to post fictitious and less than fictitious ramblings), the Banned Library has extended out into cyberspace to include just about every social media organization and has been welcomed with open arms (except by that one dude in #libchat that time, but he was a jerk so forget about him). We hope to continue and grow each week.
Check back every day or so to find some new rambling nonsense that has little to do with the library news story that supplied it and now on Sundays for the newsletter.
Thank you, generous patrons of the Banned Library. Without you this library would be empty.