Tag Archives: censorship

Advocacy, Books

Day Thirty Eight of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

As a profession, we are always pushing back against censorship of books. This project, though not done by librarian, is a very interesting visual display of books that have been banned around the world!

“The Parthenon was built in Athens at the instigation of Pericles, under the supervision of the sculptor Phidias, between 447 and 38 BCE. The structure is ten meters high by seventy meters long and thirty meters wide. The temple was conceived to house a colossal gold statue of Athena, as well as the Delian League’s treasury and the city’s silver reserves—in the event of a Persian attack, these precious metals could be melted down and made into new coins to finance war. Transformed into a Christian church in the Middle Ages, then into a mosque during the Renaissance, the deconsecrated Parthenon of the modern period became a symbol of democracy and of Western cultural supremacy.
Marta Minujín, born in Buenos Aires in 1943, seized this aesthetic and political archetype of democracy for her own situation: corrupted by a “national Catholic” dictatorship that reigned in Argentina up until 1983, she put the democratic ideal back into circulation at the moment when the military junta fell. Her artistic project was part of her series “La caída de los mitos universals” or “The Fall of Universal Myths,” which appropriated monumental icons to replicate them, break them up into pieces, and redistribute them into the public realm. In a certain way, the artist gives back to these symbols—reified and confiscated by institutionalization or capitalization—their status as offerings. For El Partenón de libros (The Parthenon of Books, 1983), 25,000 books, taken from cellars where they had been locked up by the military, covered a scale replica of the Greek edifice; built out of metal tubes and elevated to one side, this Parthenon was placed in a public square in the southern part of Buenos Aires.
Minujín’s monuments to democracy and to education through art revive the ceremonies of archaic societies—contrary to the banning of books by the junta’s army and different from the privatization of public property that, through speculating on the debt of the state, encourages the suppression of public-sector services and creates social shortages. In her mass-participation projects, Minujín rediscovers the initial value of a collective treasure; she melts shared capital back down into cultural currency without remainder. She lays down the verticality of public edifices that embody confiscated cultural knowledge and a hidebound heritage. She dilapidates the fortune these myths represent. By literally tilting these symbols, Minujín not only gives new meaning to these monuments, she offers them a new sensuality.
—Pierre Bal-Blanc

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Books, Communication, Materials

American Library Association Urges Schools Not To Remove ‘13 Reasons Why’

13-reasons-why-5888f5cfd8122

“The popularity of the series might really save lives and so might more reading and talking about the issue.”

From Huffington Post, By Katherine Brooks 

“Following what’s been described as a “rash of suicides in southern Colorado,” a school district in the state ordered librarians to temporarily remove the book Thirteen Reasons Why from its shelves.

The YA novel, written by Jay Asher, is the source material for a wildly popular and highly contentious Netflix adaptation of the same name, about a high school girl who decides to commit suicide after compiling a series of tapes that chronicle her reasons for doing so.

The show, considered a smash success for the streaming service, has been both praised by critics for its unsettling take on teenage-centric TV and denounced by psychologists for its irresponsible depiction of mental illness.

Teachers and parents have expressed similar concerns, claiming that the TV show glorifies and romanticizes suicide ― taking issue with the graphic depiction of the lead character’s actual suicide, which some have claimed opens the door for copycats.

In response, the curriculum director at Mesa County Valley School District in Colorado, Leigh Grasso, told her schools’ librarians to temporarily pull copies of Asher’s book from circulation. “I think we were just being cautious until we had the opportunity to look at the book and see how closely related to the movie it was,” she told The Associated Press.

According to the AP, the order “rankled some librarians who called [the decision] censorship.” Following protests, the books ― 19 of which were already checked out by students at the time ― were officially returned to circulation.

“Censorship is a slippery slope,” one librarian wrote to the school, according to emails obtained by The Daily Sentinel through a Colorado Open Records Act request.”

Advocacy, Programs, Services

Intellectual Freedom News 5/12/17

This is our issue! This is what we, as library people, do for our communities – and the need to protect the intellectual freedom of our communities is very strong right now.

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“Intellectual Freedom Highlights

  • Banned books and (nearly) murdered authors | OZY: “When the Nazis first started burning books, Sigmund Freud saw it as a positive thing — even though, as a Jewish author, his books were systematically thrown atop the pyre. The famed psychoanalyst knew, after all, that things could have been a lot worse. His reasoning? ‘Look, we’re becoming more civilized: We’re burning books, not people,’ says James LaRue, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. But Freud would soon be disillusioned, when, shortly thereafter, ‘the Nazis started burning people too,’ LaRue adds.”
  • Censorship or Hate Crime? | Intellectual Freedom Blog; “Book burning, tearing pages, destroying books in disrespectful and obscene ways are all methods of censorship. If the books are representative of a specific group of people like the Qur’an is of Muslims, is the censorship also a hate crime?”
  • Apply for a Freedom to Read Foundation Grant for Banned Books Week events! Deadline today, May 12! 

Continue reading Intellectual Freedom News 5/12/17 →

Communication, Resources

Why is federal government data disappearing?

Censored section of Green Illusions by Ozzie Zehner

Your library probably uses federal data to help your patrons with their research and information needs. You definitely have access to an enormous amount of information, generally presumed to be reliable and valid, produced by an enormous range of federal agencies – all paid for with tax dollars and belonging to all of us.

Libraries of all types have relied on being able to provide this information to our communities – health information from the CDC, planning visits to our national parks, NASA ideas on space travel, photos from your state in the National Archives, knowing what shots to get before traveling from the Dept of Health and Human Services, information on worker’s rights from the Dept of Labor, studies done on pesticides and industrial waste in the water and soil in your neighborhood from the EPA, plans for bridge safety from the Dept of Transportation, George Carlin’s FBI file, raising chickens in your back yard from the Dept of Agriculture, and so much more.

But some of this information is disappearing, and for libraries – committed as a profession to providing and sharing information freely – this is a serious problem. In addition to the ethical challenges of hiding and censoring information, this reduces the material we can share with our communities – always a problem for us!! Continue reading Why is federal government data disappearing? →

Academic, Communication, Public, Resources, School Media Specialist, Special, Training

See some Censorship? Say something!

It can be tough to know what to do if your library has a potential censorship situation. But you are not alone!! The ALA is here for all libraries, whether or not you are a member. Being part of a profession means you have resources and support – a good thing when problems happen!

From the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom:

The Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) introduced upgraded tools that make censorship easier to report and easier to track. We’ve rolled out a simpler form to document censorship and hate crime and a web page exclusively for challenge support.

Report Censorship

Continue reading See some Censorship? Say something! →