Two new shirts

from the American Library Association, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary, so these are vintage designs they've brought back from the past.

 

This does not serve teen patrons or their families, and is largely a waste of time

Why an Indiana library is pulling books from its shelves

I guess the bright thing here is that books deemed against board policy are not being removed from the whole library collection, but merely being relocated to the adult section, where they can still be checked out by teens.  But, the sheer amount of money and staff time involved ($114,000-$300,000 in terms of financial costs, a year and over 8,000 estimated staff hours in terms of time) will detract from the acquisition of new materials and presenting library programmes, and that's a shame.  All because of the current cultural war on libraries.  I was a medical librarian, not a public librarian.  But this is all very disheartening and against the training of most librarians.  I do wonder if fewer of us want to work in libraries, especially in red states.  While censorship comes from both the right and the left, this sort of thing seems to be the latter.  Teens are learning about life and will deal with all sorts of decisions regarding sex, relationships, menstruation, drinking/drug use, reckless behaviours and the like. Why can't we have books to start a discussion on those topics so they can think and be prepared for what happens in real life rather than keeping them in the dark till they're 18 and then letting them loose in the world?

Long live Judy Blume

I agree with this completely.

I will tell you that we were passing around V.C. Andrews books, I devoured "Flowers in the Attic," and that whole series. How was that OK, but reading a book about a girl who is wondering about her body and questioning religion and having certain feelings about her friends — why wasn't that OK? I wish I could go tell my 11-year-old self not to listen to all the people who said, "That book is not OK for you. It's a dirty book. It's a naughty book. Don't read it." Because I think it would have really helped me as a flat-chested, shy, insecure 11-year-old to meet Margaret.--Leah Wolchok

"Judy herself is furious": "Judy Blume Forever" directors on today's book banning and moral panic

Interesting, and she has a point

A Censored History of Ladies in YA Fiction

Within the pages of these books, we have girl stories. That is, stories about what happens to girls, not books for girls. There’s physical violence, romance of all shades (between a girl and a boy, a girl and more than one boy, a girl and a girl), sexual violence, self-harm, tough but real language, and sex/sexuality. And sure, many of the books written by women that are challenged have male main characters, but the problem goes back to what S. E. Hinton was told when she launched this ship in the first place: you can’t be a woman and be taken seriously.

Call them by any name you want, but these challenges stem from fears about girls’ stories coming to the front and being told. Men have their novels challenged, too, but less frequently and, more likely than not, for reasons similar to why women’s novels are: the fear of something different (anything outside the “mainstream” white, straight male standard). Blume has more titles on the most-challenged list than any other author — even Robert Cormier could only muster three — because being female and writing about issues girls face are challenge- and ban- worthy actions indeed.

One approach to censorship

Davis district sued over flap about lesbian mothers book

A Kaysville parent sued the Davis School District on Tuesday, alleging her children’s First Amendment rights were violated by a school committee’s decision earlier this year to remove a book about lesbian mothers from shelves of elementary libraries.

Students can read the picture book, In Our Mothers’ House, by Patricia Polacco, only if they have a permission slip signed by parents. The policy decision brought applause from parents who felt the story wasn’t appropriate for young children and criticism from opponents who believed it was unjustified censorship and hurtful to gay and lesbian families.

Also nice to know, the lone dissenter on the committee which voted to remove the book from general circulation was a librarian, a high school librarian, Trudena Fager. Kudos to her.

Up and I've been busy

Getting everything ready for the carpet cleaners. Everything's off the floor, the floor's been vaccumed, and I'm showered and I've eaten--all before I would normally clock in at work. I do hope they come early, as I have laundry to do, and I can't take a chance on being in the laundry room when they come. So now I'm listening to Rob Thomas on the radio and considering my next move.

I did glance at the news. I'm sorry to hear that the missing Tennessee mother and her eldest daughter were found dead. Her other two daughters are still missing, allegedly kidnapped by a family friend. Horrible.

On a happier note:
Brevard libraries take another peek at banned '50 Shades of Grey': Library officials to review their selection while word about 'Shades' spreads through media Okay, it's a racy book, yes, but there are others just as racy in our libraries, and censorship certainly doesn't belong there. So it's good that they're at least reviewing their policy. Maybe someone will read the book before the final decision is made, too--I got the impression that they pulled it without doing so. It's not one I'm interested in reading, but my, it's popular in the book and e-book markets. And I'm not saying that libraries have to stock out and out pornography to stay relevant, but anytime you pull a title that's that popular, it's going to be a public relations nightmare.

I haven't read them, they're not my thing

but censorship isn't either...but one library, at least, is pulling them from the shelves, and not because anyone asked them to:

Brevard libraries pull erotic best-seller 'Fifty Shades of Grey'

Characterised as 'mommy porn', the books are being taken out of circulation because they are too racy.

While the naughty novel doesn’t check out with local library officials, a quick look at the Brevard system’s online catalogue reveals a solid stash of some of the most erotic and enduring literature.

Copies of “The Complete Kama Sutra” are available through the Cocoa Beach, Mims/Scottsmoor, Palm Bay and Titusville branches. Also up for grabs countywide: “Fanny Hill,” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Fear of Flying,” “Tropic of Cancer” and “Lolita.”

So what makes “Fifty Shades of Grey” different?

“I think because those other books were written years ago and became classics because of the quality of the writing,” Schweinsberg said. “This is not a classic.”

That would be the library director. I do hope she at least read the thing before they banned it, rather than relying on word of mouth. Funny, they stock the Anita Blake books by Laurell K. Hamilton, which are overtly sexual and violent to the point where I stopped reading them because the story sort of became moot and it seemed that the books were written to satisfy the author's own fantasies rather than to tell a tale. And then there's her Merry Gentry books as well, where the main character has a harem of men to service her practically on every page--and these are not classics, either. Yet they remain. Did they not get the memo on them?

Lexington Public Library has many copies of Fifty Shades of Grey on its new books shelves--I count 76 in hardback, with 90 checkouts and 329 requests, and then there's 23 copies of the first e-book with 82 people on the waiting list. I'm interested to see how it plays out here, but I have faith in my library.

[Shakes head and tuts, and not in a conservative-keep-everything-from-kids-prudish-sort-of-way]

Remember the case in Jessamine County where the two library paraprofessionals basically broke library rules and abrogated a patron's rights because they believed that a graphic novel was too graphic? Here's some more:

Library employees fired over censorship of graphic novel

I could write about this further, but I happen to agree with one commenter, writing as 'dkm', whose opinion is quoted below:

According to the original article: "Both women say they remain baffled as to the reasoning behind their dismissal.

... According to the Employee Manual, grounds for dismissal can include insubordination, theft or misuse of the Jessamine library's property, breach of confidentiality information and any other violation of library policy."

Considering that the two women were guilty of insubordination, misuse of the library's property, breach of confidentiality and being dopes, they can't be too bright if they don't understand why they were fired. Since they obviously are not too bright, they certainly have no business working in a library and I wonder if they got their jobs under false pretenses.

My favourite quote from the article is that one of the women who said, '"People prayed over me while I was reading it because I did not want those images in my head," she says.'

Here's a thought. DON'T READ WHAT BOTHERS YOU. But keep your small-minded opinions to yourself and do the job required of you--or quit if you find it conflicting with your beliefs.

This was the same library that offered me a job then yanked it out from under me over something that had nothing to do with my ability to do the job. Granted, I'm a tiny bit bitter, but apparently they had no trouble hiring people like this, much to their present dismay. Oh, well.

The rights of the patron outweigh the librarian's personal ideals

From my own backyard--I even was offered a job there, once, but it fell through:

Librarians Won't Give Child 'Porn' Book

I wouldn't call The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen porn. I'm not sure I would want my 12-year-old reading it, but on the other hand, isn't that the parent's decision? Seems the library thinks so. These women went against policy to keep what is in their opinion a 'filthy' book out of the hands of a patron. But that's rather subjective and emotional.

Granted, I don't know the context of the supposedly lewd material. I have read the original comic books but not this particular book. But I know there are always people willing to decide what others should read or do. I remember a child of friends getting into trouble at school because she drew stallions as they really are, anatomically correct. We tend to 'protect' children from reality sometimes to the point where it is either detrimental, in terms of them not knowing about life and being ready for what it grants them, or sometimes it turns out to be ludicrous because kids today know a lot more about sex than many stuffy adults. Once we as librarians take the role of the obscenity police we cross a line. Kids mature at different rates, and a 12-year-old is on the cusp of being a teenager. The best judge of what she can handle would most likely be the parents, not two busybodies who censored a book in the name of protecting someone from what they saw as pornography.

I will point out that comic books (and presumably the graphic novels which collect the story into one book) are rated much like movies. Mature comics usually are labelled such for people 13 and over. I don't know if this was rated mature, or how the library deals with the different ratings. But the point is these women should not have taken it upon themselves to cancel the girl's hold on the book simply because of their own opinions, so I think the case was handled correctly. I wouldn't be surprised if a case for wrongful termination will be tried, but I doubt they'll get a lot of support from the library community, as the profession as a whole subscribes to ethics that support the rights of the reader/patron over our own personal beliefs as to suitability. When I was the same age a librarian refused to let me read a John Jakes novel, The Bastard, I believe it was called, upon which a popular television miniseries at the time had been based, even though I was reading at a college level and was fairly mature for my age. Apparently I could watch the stuff on TV but not read about it. It incensed me then, and it still stings today.

Thanks to Blake from LISNews for the head's up.

PS Do TV news websites even have editors? The story used 'lye' for 'lie', for example. I know it's easy to make typos (I do them myself, but I just have myself to rely upon), but it used to be there were people to catch such errors. I constantly find spelling and grammar errors on professional websites, advertising, even published books. Is editing a dying vocation? Just wondering.

'Read. Speak. Know.' Celebrating Banned Book Week September 26th-October 3rd, 2009

'Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.' Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Two videos from the American Library Association regarding Banned Books Week:





Here are a few from other people:







Top 10 from last year (according to the ALA):

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell; Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group
   
2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman; Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence
   
3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
   
4. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz; Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence
   
5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence
   
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky; Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group
   
7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar; Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
   
8. Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen; Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group
   
9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini; Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
   
10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper; Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group
    

There were 517 reported challenges last year. But many go unreported.

Check out some of the statistics at ALA's website, banned and challenged classics. Plus, there are the top 100 banned books from the last decade and lists for the 21st century.

Also, see a map of challenges for 2007-2009.

Random news stories from my reader

Ireland Criminalizes Blasphemy

Were We Smarter 100 Years Ago...? The 1909 Copyright Hearings

'Angela's Ashes' Author McCourt Dies in NYC at 78

Google Reader Improves Link Blog Discoverability, Security, Adds Likes

DNA Differences Observed between Blood and Organs

Crafts for (the) Retarded? [Awful Library Books]

Amazon Erases Orwell Books from Kindle

Down Days for Baghdad's Antiquities Dealers

Chocolate Just Got Better!

For Fish, It's More the Merrier

Good night!

Best 'Unshelved' ever, in my mind

The library-related comic really got me today. In case you read this after it is no longer displayed on my blog, try the link here to see an archived copy.

Ever heard of The Anarchist's Cookbook? How about And Tango Makes Three? One teaches you to make bombs. The other involves gay penguins and their child. Which do you think is more challenged in libraries? Yes, you guessed it. But Dewey's comment is great.

Okay, I have to get up early in the morning to prepare for the game and have stayed up much later than I planned, especially as I finished the game notes this afternoon. Good night.

Possible future librarian extraordinare!

From a post on Yahoo!Answers:

Is it OK to run an illegal library from my locker at school?
Let me explain.

I go to a private school that is rather strict. Recently, the principal and school teacher council released a (very long) list of books we're not allowed to read. I was absolutely appalled, because a large number of the books were classics and others that are my favorites. One of my personal favorites, The Catcher in the Rye, was on the list, so I decided to bring it to school to see if I would really get in trouble. Well... I did but not too much. Then (surprise!) a boy in my English class asked if he could borrow the book, because he heard it was very good AND it was banned! This happened a lot and my locker got to overflowing with the banned books, so I decided to put the unoccupied locker next to me to a good use. I now have 62 books in that locker, about half of what was on the list. I took care only to bring the books with literary quality. Some of these books are:

>The Perks of Being a Wallflower
>His Dark Materials trilogy
>Sabriel
>The Canterbury Tales
>Candide
>The Divine Comedy
>Paradise Lost
>The Godfather
>Mort
>Interview with the Vampire
>The Hunger Games
>The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
>Animal Farm
>The Witches
>Shade's Children
>The Evolution of Man
> the Holy Qu'ran
... and lots more.

Anyway, I now operate a little mini-library that no one has access to but myself. Practically a real library, because I keep an inventory log and give people due dates and everything. I would be in so much trouble if I got caught, but I think it's the right thing to do because before I started, almost no kid at school but myself took an active interest in reading! Now not only are all the kids reading the banned books, but go out of their way to read anything they can get their hands on. So I'm doing a good thing, right? Oh, and since you're probably wondering "Why can't you just go to a local library and check out the books?" most of the kids are too chicken or their parents won't let them but the books. I think that people should have open minds. Most of the books were banned because they contained information that opposed Catholisism. I limit my 'library' to only the sophmores, juniors and seniors just in case so you can't say I'm exposing young people to materiel they're not mature enough for. But is what I'm doing wrong because parents and teachers don't know about it and might not like it, or is it a good thing because I am starting appreciation of the classics and truly good novels (Not just fad novels like Twilight) in my generation?

Additional Details
More books I have:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Slaughterhouse-5
Lord of the Flies
Bridge to Terabithia
Catch-22
East of Eden
The Brothers Grimm Unabridged Fairytales.
...the list goes on.

Twilight is banned also, but I don't want that polluting my library.

As for getting the press involved, reporters are not allowed on campus. Besides, my parents would be so mad if they found out I was doing this.

This kid is awesome. I hope he or she does not get into major trouble if discovered doing this, but all in all, it is certainly worth the risk. Thanks to shelfcheck of LISNews for the story.

It's sad when an institution of learning censors someone for reading a book

IUPUI says sorry to janitor scolded over KKK book

A book, mind you, that was a historical account of a clash between another university's students and the Ku Klux Klan (in which the students came out ahead)--a book in the college's own library. A janitor/student who was reading the book on break was threatened with disciplinary action for bringing materials that would be offensive to Blacks, and it was likened to bringing pornography to work.

Fortunately civil liberties groups and the blogosphere got saner heads at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis to issue an apology and make sure that none of this affects his personnel file.

My favourite quote, by the attorney for the ACLU:

'I am sure you see the absurdity of a university threatening an employee with discipline for reading a scholarly work that deals with the efforts of Notre Dame students in the 1920s to fight the KKK.'

Indeed. Universities of all places should be places of learning and enlightenment. I could almost see people being upset about someone reading KKK tracts at work--but even so, he or she should have a right to. But this was a different matter altogether. Anyway, I'm glad it worked out despite the fact that his immediate supervisor really mishandled the situation, in my opinion.

Thanks to YKWIA for telling me about this, as well as the magazine cover flap.

The power of librarians

The medical librarian community has been buzzing for days about a discovery that POPLINE, a reproductive health site which bills itself as 'the world's largest bibliographic database on population, family planning, and related health issues' had made the term 'abortion' a stop word. For those of you unfamiliar with search jargon, a stop word is a word that is ignored by a search engine. They're normally common words such as 'a', 'an', and 'the'.

This upset virtually anyone concerned with censorship who heard about it, and POPLINE was suddenly facing the ire of librarians and researchers who contacted them, wrote in blogs, and publicised the move. Apparently this had effect; the dean of the school where it was developed has ordered it restored and is investigating why it happened in the first place. Now it's made it into the general media:

Web Site Restores "Abortion" Search Term: Reproductive Health Site Funded By Gov't Was Slammed For Restricting Use Of Word In Searches

When asked by one librarian why this happened, POPLINE administrator Debra L Dickson wrote: 'Yes, we did make a change to POPLINE. We recently made all abortion words stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.'

You see, POPLINE is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Due to an order by President Bush resurrecting a Reagan-era practice, the agency 'denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations', as the article put it. This is effectively a gag order preventing federally-funded organisations from discussing abortion. Of course, by making it a stop word it meant throwing out 'spontaneous abortion' (miscarriage) and the alternatives suggested were too broad for meaningful results. So, it's good to see 'abortion' as a term back.

Yay for Dr Michael J Klag, who restored the term.

Good question

Should bookstores stocking racy romance novels, the Bible (the Song of Songs read literally), or Dr. Ruth’s Sex for Dummies have to become state-registered vendors of sexually explicit materials?

ABFFE challenges Indiana law

Scary when in a free society, on a college campus

a student reporter is tackled and TASERed by police for asking too many questions.

Tasering of Student Heard around the World

Only one person in the audience even cried 'stop!', according to reports. There have been protests on campus since then. Sen. Kerry's people (he was the speaker) have not condemned the attack, citing an unfounded report of an officer injured during Andrew Meyer's resistance, and a desire to get all the facts while responding. Sen. Kerry did attempt to answer the young man's questions as he was taken away. Crazy world. I hope the charges against him are dropped.

Here's what happened:

The president of MLA blogs

about hospital IT departments and their tendency to block useful social networking sites (like Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube).

It includes a chart from a survey listing what percentage of MLA members' institutions block each site. It doesn't break it down between hospitals, academic medical centres, etc., yet. Heartening is that 66% of reporting members said their institution did not block any site. But it's frustring for the rest of us.

I'm not sure what ours blocks. I think the only one I've come across is YouTube, when I was looking for a presentation video I'd seen at a conference that I wanted to view again. We at least have the option of appealing if we have a legitimate reason for accessing the site, though, and that's great.

Making public information more public--to the embarassment of some Wikipedia editors

Wikipedia and the art of censorship: "It was hailed as a breakthrough in the democratisation of knowledge. But the online encyclopedia has since been hijacked by forces who decided that certain things were best left unknown."

Fortunately the folks at Wikipedia and watchdogs among those who routinely edit tend to catch insults, conflicts of interest, and questionable deletions. But a new program links edits with the organisation with which the computer used is affiliated, and that's caused some embarrassment for companies, political parties, government agencies, religious groups, all sorts of people. It can't get specifically down to who made the edits, but it's picking up the conflicts of interest and tinkering being done in the interest of public relations and cover-ups.

Okay, I really am going to bed now. Oh, and here's the website for WikiScanner

Incidentally, I put in my own company and I went from a page that an unknown coworker apparently edited on Monty Python and the Holy Grail to this:

Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow

and incidentally, no it wasn't me....I have never edited a Wikipedia article, yet.

Okay, this is stupid and wrong

Religious books taken off prison library shelves:
Federal directive is intended to prevent inmates from reading radical materials.

Thanks to YKWIA for the link