Intellectual Freedom News 11/15/2019
Whodunit in the Library: Someone Keeps Hiding the Anti-Trump Books; Author believes Dist. 200 canceled Wheaton school visit due to LGBTQ content; officials cite procedural issue; Can facial recognition technologies, privacy, and the freedom of expression co-exist?
To Repair the Irreparably Riven: Censored Books Into Healing Artwork
Wringing activism from a moment of adversity within the library. I’d be hard pressed to find a more satisfying example of taking an untenable incident and converting it into a teachable moment that evokes compassion, empathy, and understanding.
Happy Birthday Richelle Mead
Imagine you’re an author, in the middle of writing an international bestselling YA book series about vampires, when you find out that that same book series has been banned from one school district. Banned in its entirety. But wait. You’re not finished with the series yet. Is this school district really banning books…before they are even published?
Dispatches from the Houghton, Part Four: The Last Quarter
One last trip to visit the (formerly) forbidden books housed at Harvard’s Houghton Library.
Intellectual Freedom News 11/8/19
ALA responds to Citrus County’s New York Times block; Media literacy in the age of fake news; Books in Idaho prisons: What’s allowed, what isn’t, and what they mean to those inside
“They said women’s minds were too weak for reading.” Forbidden literacy in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments
Atwood’s sequel, set fifteen years after Offred’s step into the darkness, or else the light, at the end of the original novel, brings us new mediations on the power of reading, the strength of the mind, and women and literacy.
Teaching Disinformation Literacy
Instead of focusing mainly on fake websites when teaching information literacy skills, teachers should introduce the term disinformation and provide students with learning opportunities to explore the detrimental effects disinformation has on society.
Scholars at Risk’s Free Online Course on Academic Freedom
The Scholars at Risk (SAR) Network has developed a free massive open online course (MOOC) on academic freedom titled Dangerous Questions: Why Academic Freedom Matters.
Libraries, Literacy, and Lip-Syncing: Drag Queen Story Hour and Free Speech
Long banished are the images of the library as a stuffy and sedate place where any utterance above a whisper was met with swift opprobrium. Shushes and scowls from curmudgeon librarians ready to revoke your borrowing privileges. Very much far from that staid stereotype, libraries have become fortresses of acceptance and forthright with welcoming upright and raucous revelry within their aisles. And nothing encapsulates this veering toward the vivacious than the wildly successful Drag Queen Story Hours.
Intellectual Freedom News 11/1/19
Lebanon Public Libraries make the sound and principled decision to reject internet filters; Sex, nudity, and satanism are why parents believe in school book censorship; Anonymous signs help Brookline library patrons find sensitive information