Parents Against Bad Books in School

I ran across this site the other day. The authors of the website list hundreds of books that they consider inappropriate, along with lengthy excerpts from each book that they find objectionable.

Privacy of Library Records

In response to the debate in Vermont about a new privacy law, the Burlington Free Press published an eloquent piece from Judah Hamer, who is president of the Vermont Library Association

In a library, the right to privacy means the right to open inquiry. Individuals must be able to seek information about any subject without fear of judgment, criticism or scrutiny of others. Freedom of speech is meaningless without the freedom to receive information; they are the underpinnings of a healthy democracy. While many Vermont libraries already provided confidentiality protection, the new law provides greater assurance to patrons across Vermont that their reading habits and research interests are private matters that they alone can decide to share with others. It's just one of the many ways we continue to serve our communities.

Philip Pullman on Censorship

How appropriate that Philip Pullman, author of "The Golden Compass" has a great piece on censorship in the Guardian this week

The inevitable result of trying to ban something – book, film, play, pop song, whatever – is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone. Why don't the censors realise this?

Banned Books Week

From the ALA Website

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2008, marks BBW's 27th anniversary (September 27 through October 4).

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

BBW is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, American Library Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Association of American Publishers, National Association of College Stores, and is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

So what do you have planned? Feel free to post events, activities or ideas here

or if you need some ideas, check the ALA Presskit or the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression free online handbook.

Fahrenheit 451 in Weld County

This from the PR Department at High Plains Library District:

This event is part of the Big Read celebration featuring Fahrenheit 451 and will feature David Kipen, Literature Director with the National Endowment for the Arts and community leaders reading the names and brief excerpts from the American Library Association's list of Banned Books while burning the mock novel.

For more information on this event, please contact Kelli Johnson.

The Big Read 2008: Fahrenheit 451 will take place from September 21 - October 31. A full schedule of events is available on line at www.MyLibrary.us.

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museums and Library Science and Arts Midwest.

Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite novels, for many reasons, but I'm not sure yet how I feel about a "mock" book burning even as part of banned books event .... how about you?

If you want to read a real treasure of book about book burning gone wild, try Out of the Flames by Lawrence and Nacy Goldstone, one of the best books that I've read in the last year

ttnf goes bye-bye

An outraged parent prompts middle school administrator to pull ttfn from library shelf.
Full story.

Privacy, computers and libraries

Several interesting items regarding libraries and the net and law enforcement....

In Vermont, Children's Librarian Judith Flint, held off the police who came in demanding to seize the computers in the children's area.

Flint demanded a search warrant, touching off a confrontation that pitted the privacy rights of library patrons against the rights of police on official business.

"It's one of the most difficult situations a library can face," said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of intellectual freedom issues for the American Library Association.

Investigators did obtain a warrant about eight hours later, but the June 26 standoff in the 105-year-old, red brick library on Main Street frustrated police and had fellow librarians cheering Flint..... A new Vermont law that requires libraries to demand court orders in such situations took effect July 1, but it wasn't in place that June day. The library's policy was to require one.

Jessamyn West has blogged more on the incident and some of the ramifications. Amy Grasmick, Library Director of the Kimball Library, has added an eloquent post along with sound guidelines for libraries on how to handle such an incident.

The American Library Association has provided quite a bit of information about handling inquiries from law enforcement and includes a comprehensive collection of suggested policies for dealing with privacy issues in the library.

Ryan Singel has post on the Wired Blog about the third strike against COPA (Child Online Protection Act) as the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld on Tuesday a 2007 lower-court decision that the act was unconstitutional. Interesting reading in the comments section follows

Uncle Bobby’s Wedding Challenged

This was posted by Nicolle Stephen from the Library Research Service on the Colorado Libraries Blog.
Comments?

Intellectual Freedom - Broadly Speaking

I almost bought a Kindle text reader the other day. I decided to wait for version 2.0, and possibly for the price to drop, but it got me thinking... I now own two iPods and a little cheapie mp3 player that I use for downloadable audiobooks at the library (not compatible with iPods). The iPods have changed the way I get information. Sure, I have some great music and audiobooks on them, but that's not the real treasure.

The real treasure is in the podcasts. These are like on-demand radio broadcasts, and most are free. Because podcasting is so new and not too expensive to produce, there's still lots of room for the little guy. I get lots of NPR and C-SPAN programs, news and all the politics I can stand - all on my schedule. But also I can hear Nancy Pearl's books reviews, wine reviews, lunch hour Spanish lessons and thousands of other things. And I've also learned that I LOVE science! I never knew that. Oh, I don't look at it in an incredibly focused way, but in my reference librarian way. That is, with a knowledge base that's a mile wide and and inch deep. There's plenty to keep me entertained and informed. There's the Naked Scientists, a group of scientists podcasting weekly from Cambridge University, in England. They're funny and educational. And no, they're not nudists, but are "stripping" down science. And there's The Science Show, from Australia. And I can't function without my weekly update from The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, a science-based group who love to debunk everything from Bigfoot and UFOs to the children's vaccine controversy and alternative medicine. The host is a Yale neurologist, and I always learn something.

So, what has this to do with intellectual freedom? Well, not only are podcasts entertaining, but they are another way to customize and expand the delivery of information. For those of us who like getting our information in an audio format it's another source of news and education, both for traditional and alternative sources. Some things, such as my science and language podcasts, lend themselves very well to the spoken word. And have I mentioned that this information is available when we want it, in whatever time chunk we want it? It's like blogging, but for the ears. And just as bloggers have served at times to keep the traditional media on its toes, and to get information (both good and bad) out to the masses, so can podcasts. Bloggers have kept important stories alive when the fast-paced news cycle would bury them. Podcasts can do the same.

This is a medium we should keep our eyes on and our ears tuned to. Some libraries are doing their own podcasts, and ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom is using it as a means to broadcast information. If your library is podcasting, or if your patrons are asking about it I'd love to hear about it.

Data Privacy

Bruce Schneier has an interesting piece over at the Wired blog on data security

We need to take back our data.

Our data is a part of us. It's intimate and personal, and we have basic rights to it. It should be protected from unwanted touch.

We need a comprehensive data privacy law. This law should protect all information about us, and not be limited merely to financial or health information. It should limit others' ability to buy and sell our information without our knowledge and consent. It should allow us to see information about us held by others, and correct any inaccuracies we find. It should prevent the government from going after our information without judicial oversight. It should enforce data deletion, and limit data collection, where necessary. And we need more than token penalties for deliberate violations.

On another note, Brewster Kahle of Open Library fame, recently announced that the Internet Archive and he had been served with one of those pesky national security letters demanding information about one of its users. Kahle was under a gag order but the term of the settlement which ended the the demand allows him to comment on the incident.

Project Safe Childhood

Several bloggers have commented on the latest study from the study published in American Psychologist dealing with the myths and realities of online predators. To quote from the press release:

Contrary to stereotype, most Internet sex offenders are not adults who target young children by posing as another youth, luring children to meetings, and then abducting or forcibly raping them, according to researchers who have studied the nature of Internet-initiated sex crimes.

Rather, most online sex offenders are adults who target teens and seduce victims into sexual relationships. They take time to develop the trust and confidence of victims, so that the youth see these relationships as romances or sexual adventures. The youth most vulnerable to online sex offenders have histories of sexual or physical abuse, family problems, and tendencies to take risks both on- and offline, the researchers say.

The full text of the study is available from APA


This topic is not new -
Chatmag published an editorial debunking the myth of 50,000 online predators in 2006 which was used when Project Safe Childhood was announced. Neither the FBI nor the Center for Missing and Exploited Children can explain the figure. Benjamin Radford even explores the history of the alarming number and concluded that "The vast majority of crimes against children are committed not by released sex offenders, but instead by the victim's own family, church clergy, and family friends", not online predators.

As Libraries are increasingly becoming the target of battles against pornography, they are also being targeted as enablers of criminal activity. All across the country the discussion is heating up - Colorado, Sacramento, Gwinnett County, Georgia, and Brooklyn, to cite a few examples.

And just in case you think the Department of Justice isn't serious about this, on May 7th they announced the distribution of $5 million to fund 43 US Attorneys who are solely charged with combating "technology-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes against children"

Stumbling around censorship

I was stumbling around and found an interesting website called Project Censorsed which is a media research group out of Sonoma State University - they like to list things such as the top censored stories for the year - feel free to submit stories to them

Edible Books

At the last IFC meeting it was suggested that we participate in the Edible Books Show in Boulder and after a quick brainstorming session we decided on a book with words blocked out - here is our entry with a passage from "Being There" by Jerzy Kosinski



The Edible Books show has its roots in the book arts community and is hosted every year in Boulder by the Book Arts League.