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This has been a heady National Library Week for many librarians I know and me in particular. There’s been a lot of online agita and, unlike the way these things usually go, some things wound up changing for the better. Here’s a list. Apologies if I link too much to facebooky stuff.

1. Someone mentioned that they found Demco’s “Spanish” spine label a bit troublesome since it had a sombrero and a set of maracas (Mexican, not Spanish, and still stereotypical at that) and misspelled español (without the tilde). A few people complained to Demco. Demco listened, agreed, removed the items from their online store. Not all of their multicultural labels are perfect, but it was nice to be heard.
2. ALA’s Banned Books Week poster which was put in the ALA Store this week got a lot of pushback. Does the woman look like she is wearing a niqab? What’s the poster trying to communicate? Andromeda spells out well what some of the issues with the poster are. People wrote to ALA. ALA listened. Took a while to respond. Came back with a few posts from the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom
   1. Statement on the 2015 Banned Books Week Poster
   2. How Do We Design a Banned Books Campaign
   3. Response Concerning the 2015 Banned Books Week

   I particularly found some of the crosstalk interesting about whether objecting to a marketing poster was in the same family as objecting to something being in the library collection. I know we can be a mouthy contentious bunch, but given that, some of this discussion seemed to take place on new ground and it was curious to me how much my years in the MetaFilter trenches has helped me manage these sorts of discussions.

3. Daredevil is a great show on Netflix about a blind superhero which did not have any descriptive audio which many found ironic. People complained. The Accessible Netflix Project started a petition. Netflix fixed it.
4. After my last post about SpaceX, I decided to expand it into an article for Medium which I did with some nice photos and a lot of linking. A few days later, Flickr actually added an option for users to have public domain and CC0 licenses on their photos. This is, to me, a HUGELY great outcome. I wrote another short article about this.
5. On a more personal note, Jason Goldman wrote a post on Medium to talk about how he was going to become the new White House Chief Digital Officer. I left a comment on that article talking about how part of getting people involved in civic engagement is helping them to trust the online world (i.e. doing the opposite of everything Healthcare.gov has done). This comment got a nod in Goldman’s next article now that he’s taken office. I am very very pleased about this.

Bonus link the #journalofneutrallibrarianship hashtag is a pretty good time if you like Twitter. And I wrote a nerdy article about research and Wikipedia that I think you might enjoy if you haven’t seen me blabbing about it all over the place for the past few days.

How to lie with Wikipedia

For some reason last year I didn’t do my annual roundup of Banned Books Week websites. Here is a link to the source of the image above which is from the New Yorker’s article about the JD Salinger-evocative book 60 Years Later, Coming Through the Rye which is illegal to sell in the US. You can find more news articles about that situation at the author’s small Wikipedia page. You can look at past posts on this topic by checking out the bannedbooksweek tag here or here is a list of the annual posts: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. I skipped 2005 and 2012.

As usual, you get a neat real-time look at what’s going on by following the Twitter hashtag. Do NOT look at the bbw twitter hashtag as I mistakenly did last night. As usual there are two “main” sites the ALA site at ala.org/bbooks and the bannedbooksweek.org site which is really nice looking this year. The BannedBooksWeek Twitter account is still moribund which is a damned shame. The Virtual Read Out doesn’t seem to have any new videos this year… yet?

Please remember if you are a librarian who has a book that is challenged, report it to the ALA so they can keep track of it.

Here is the list of organizations who are co-sponsors. Let’s look at their websites.

• American Library Association – has that clicky slide show on their home page, in which #7 is a link to the Banned Books site on ALA.org. There is a link to their press release on their news page. OIF maintains the main Banned Books Week pages which I linked to above.
• American Booksellers Association – they seem to do most of their promotion via ABFFE (below) but they have this post on their blog about what is going on this week and also created a Banned Books Week in a Box for book sellers to promote Banned Books Week. Nothing at all on their Facebook/Twitter accounts.
• American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression – is doing a poetry reading in NYC and I’m gratified to see their home page mentioning the NSA/Snowden issues. Last year’s Banned Books Week Handbook is still available though their Five Easy Ways to participate has been changed to Four Easy Ways. I especially appreciate their links and information about the Kids Right to Read Project since the bulk of challenges lately are about books that people deem age inappropriate.
• American Society of Journalists and Authors – linked to this press release which is the boilerplate one from ALA/ABA/ABFFE. their Banned Books Page from two years ago is now a 404. Nothing on Twitter/Facebook.
• Association of American Publishers – their website has a list of Banned Books Week quotations and this other page talking about what some of their major publishers are doing. Harper Collins has a Banned Books Week page on their EpicReads site outlining HC books that have been banned or challenged. Their header graphic has last year’s date on it, unfortunately.
• National Association of College Stores – nothing, as usual. Nothing on Twitter/Facebook.
• Comic Book Legal Defense Fund – has a very useful page about BBW and a list of banned/challenged comics. They also have this very useful page for librarians an educators.
• National Coalition Against Censorship – good website as always and an active and useful Twitter feed. Their Books page has links to current challenges and more information on the Kids Right to Read project.
• The Freedom to Read Foundation – are spotlighting a different recipient of the Judith Krug Fund Banned Books Week Event Grants. I especially liked reading about Judith’s Reading Room an organization that provides “custom libraries to not-for-profit organizations that serve people who, for any reason, have limited or no access to literature”
• National Council of Teachers of English – has their own BBW page this year and a link to an interesting article outlining how NCTE Actively Began Fighting Censorship in the 1950′s. They have their own challenge reporting site.
• Project Censored – a brief mention on Facebook/Twitter.
  Center for the Book in the Library of Congress – apparently endorses the events but not publicly. They are just wrapping up the National Book Festival so they’ve been a little busy.

The language of the censor is the language of the tyrant, the absolutist, the one with no vision. It is the antithesis of art because it assumes that there is only one perspective, one reality, and that anything that fails to rhyme with it is a sin against nature. But the real sin against nature is to suffocate personal truths and experiences with wobbly doctrine and to disguise it as morally just. Art— particularly literature—exists to show us there are as many worlds as there are people. Each of these worlds come with its own laws. These laws vary from person to person, but if there is one that they have in common it is to share your truth. We owe it to our humanity and our short time among other humans to respect the truths that are shared with us. – Nick Burd

Websites are working and the word is getting out. I was pleased with this year’s collections of content. What I’m concerned about, as per usual, are challenges and censorship that don’t even reach the physical items on the library shelves. What about this Salinger book? Worldcat shows 40 copies of it, a handful of which are in the US, and the reviews of it haven’t been so great anyhow. But the idea that the book wasn’t obtained and removed, it was never obtained in the first place (as we see with so much born-digital content that we can’t even get in lendable format) opens a door to all new ways that libraries can not get books. The old challenges (dirty cowboy? really? do not google that) remain and new ones appear.

It’s time for my semi-regular round up of Banned Books Week websites. You can look at past posts on this topic by checking out the bannedbooksweek tag here or here is a list of the annual posts More on the Chicago Defender.
Here are my old Banned Books Weeks posts: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. I skipped 2005.

As usual, you get a neat real-time look at what’s going on by following the Twitter hashtag. As usual there are two “main” sites the ALA site at ala.org/bbooks and the bannedbooksweek.org site. ALA has their usual site, links to shopping, links to the main site (which is a 404, oops), links to advocacy materials. They decided to do a virtual read-out instead of an in-person event and I’ve been clicking through some of the YouTube videos on the BBW channel. All the stuff I’ve seen so far seems like it would be what we call SFW [safe for work] and I’m vaguely curious if there could be something so racy that you’d get one of those “You have to be 14 to see this video” warnings up because, hey, that’s its own form of limiting speech. But I think that stuff is only for photos of people in their underwear, or maybe self-reported. The Banned Books Week main site has been up and down today and seems to mostly be pointing to the same stuff. They have a Twitter account but have never used it. The design gets better every year.

Here is the list of organizations who are co-sponsors. Let’s look at their websites.

• American Booksellers Association – hasn’t mentioned Banned Books Week on their site since 2009 if the search is to be believed. BBW does not show up under “advocacy” or “news” however a link to their blog does have news about their ongoing auction for BBW which appears to be a project of ABFFE. There are other BBW posts but no tag to find them all, though this listing is close.
• American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression – has a wordy page with information about the Read-out and the auction and a link to their Twitter feed which is mostly about the auction.
• American Library Association – has that clicky sli
  6 Comments on Banned Books Week 2011, a web content rundown, last added: 10/2/2011
  Display Comments
  How to Fight Censorship and Share Books During Ban said, on 9/28/2011 9:04:00 PM
  

  [...] Banned Books Week 2011, a web content rundown (librarian.net) [...]

  Dan Kleinman of SafeLibraries said, on 9/28/2011 9:55:00 PM
  

  Jessamyn, I attended a New Jersey Library Association conference. I heard Amy Sonnie speak about her book, Revolutionary Voices. At the end she took questions. I asked one. How does it feel to have her book listed as #9 on the ALA’s 2010 Top 10 Challenged Book List?

  She answered. I recorded. She said something that should be an earthquake in the library community. She said, not in so many words, that the ALA fixes the top 10 list to promote its political interests! It does not actually report the actual top 10 challenged books! Jessamyn, I am not kidding. I have the tape. I did not ask a leading question–I actually thought I was asking a softball that would highlight her appearance on the top 10 list. I did not make her reveal what the ALA OIF told her. Read more here: http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2011/09/banned-books-week-is-gay-promotion.html

  Let me add this. I spoke with Amy Sonnie for about half an hour at the NJLA conf. She is extremely smart and extremely savvy. Not only is she an author, she’s also a librarian! I was very much impressed by her. I hope to see her again.

  johnofjack said, on 9/29/2011 6:54:00 AM
  

  Dan, you forgot to link your post “ALA pushes porn on children.”

  Rowena Reviews » Blog Archive said, on 9/29/2011 8:33:00 PM
  

  [...] Banned Books Week 2011, a web content rundown (librarian.net) [...]

  BRYAN said, on 10/2/2011 5:31:00 AM
  

  Twitter / @mashable/celebrity: @mashable/celebrity. Celebrities on Twitter. Tyrese Gibson Tyrese The craziest sh… http://t.co/Tyx67j9r

  HARLEY said, on 10/2/2011 5:42:00 AM
  

  Twitter / @mashable/celebrity: @mashable/celebrity. Celebrities on Twitter. Tyrese Gibson Tyrese The craziest sh… http://t.co/Tyx67j9r

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It's Banned Book Week, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. 

Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Cheryl Rainfield (author of SCARS) made a great post recently about Banned Book Week and issued a challenge:

It's Banned Book Week: Speak Up and Pick Up A Good Book!

I hope you’ll consider buying (or borrowing) and reading some of these banned books–and sharing them with others. I hope, too, that you’ll speak out about book banning–write a post about it, share your thoughts on FaceBook or Twitter.

As Cheryl pointed out recently on her blog, you might be surprised at some of the books on the ALA's list of Top 100 Banned Books list (past decade): Harry Potter, for instance. But it's true.

I'm going to go through this list and make a point of reading as many of these banned books as I can.

I feel very lucky to have grown up in an area where books were never banned, but some children aren't as lucky. I'm also naive enough to still be shocked by the depth of ignorance shown by adults in modern-day society, like when an associate professor condemns books like Laurie Halse Anderson's brilliant SPEAK as "soft core pornography."

You can follow the #SpeakLoudly discussion on Twitter.

Find out more about Cheryl Rainfield and her book SCARS at http://www.cherylrainfield.com/.

Here are my old Banned Books Weeks posts: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2008. I skipped 2005.

I’ve been down with The Crud for the past few weeks. Not really sick, but not having a lot of extra energy to get involved in things outside my own library and jobs. Banned Books Week started on Saturday and runs through this week. I’ve been invited to an evening with readings from banned books tomorrow night and I think I’m staying home.

I’m not sure if I’m getting complacent, sick of this holiday, sick generally, or there really is a lot less enthusiasm this year from years previous. The ALA page is usually my starting point and it seems a little less lively than usual. Their calendar of events is Chicago based (wouldn’t it be great if they were an aggregator to BBW activity worldwide? Does such a thing exist) and indicates to me that they still haven’t learned to resize images before uploading them. The ALAOIF blog hasn’t posted yet this week though they did link to this cute video put out by ALA which I enjoyed. The main ALA BBW page doesn’t even link to the Banned Books Week page which is supposedly the “go to” page for current information — and does have a calendar of sorts — which has a broken stylesheet declaration which makes all the pages look like they were designed in 2003.

As usual, I clicked through from the ALA web page to the home pages of all the organizations who are co-sponsors of Banned Books Week. Here’s what I found.

• The American Booksellers Association mentions BBW and offers a broken link to more information about it
• The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is still offering its handbook from 2007
• The American Society for Journalists and Authors appears pretty busy opposing the Google settlement to mention BBW.
• The Association of American Publishers mentions that they are gearing up for this event, but not enough to really mention it on their website otherwise.
• National Association of College Stores has nothing, as usual
• LoC’s Center for the Book has one of the most awesome URLs ever and no mention of Banned Books Week that I can see.

Even ALA’s home page doesn’t mention Banned Books Week except on page six of their slide show where they tell us what we can buy to support it.

I wonder a little bit if this is what a post-Judith Krug ALA looks like? On a brighter note, let’s look at some Banned Books Week web pages that are useful and/or interesting

• Amnesty International puts a spin on it by looking at people who are persecuted because of the writings they produce, circulate or read.
• UPenn’s Online Books page has a nice Banned Books Online page which splits out Censored/banned books from those that are deemed unsuitable for minors (i.e. age inappropriate) and has lots of terrific links
• PBS.org has a nice little reprint of some talking points from ALA

While I’m talking about this, I’d also like to mention the data on the PBS page.

According to the ALA there have been 3,736 challenges from 2001-2008:

* 1,225 challenges due to “sexually explicit” material
* 1,008 challenges due to “offensive language”
* 720 challenges due to material deemed “unsuited to age group”
* 458 challenges due to “violence”
* 269 challenges due to “homosexuality”
* 103 challenges due to “anti-family”
* 233 challenges due to “religious viewpoints”

I think we need to look hard at this list and draw some conclusions about what sort of people believe that restricting access to books for these reasons is both a good idea or a reasonable thing to expect to be able to get away with. And then, if we want to get serious, I think we need to hit these points directly and ask people why they’re afraid of sex, or gay people (or penguins), or swearing. It’s nice to say that “free people read freely” but it’s another to be in a situation where your institutions are getting pressured by people who are intolerant and thinking that speaking truth to power is all you need to do. I’ve talked a little more about this in the MetaFilter thread about Banned Books Week, it’s always a reflective time of year for me.

Also, ALA knows that BBW means something else, right?

Banned Books Week: I’d Like To Find *BLEEP*

Find more info about Banned Books Week here.