Category: Minors
New from ALSC: Intellectual Freedom Programming Toolkit
The ALSC Intellectual Freedom Committee has just released their Intellectual Freedom Programming Toolkit. Intellectual freedom is not just for Banned Books Week, and this toolkit offers ways to provide bitesize servings of important IF concepts at any time of year. Rather than replacing existing programs with IF-centered activities, we can embed those ideas in popular programming that’s already being done.
Are Anti-Racism Book Challenges On The Rise?
There’s been a marked increase in challenges of children’s books that combat racism and immigrant bias. With social media and citizen journalism, there have been many instances of police brutality that have been recorded in the past couple of years. With this, challenges of children’s books addressing police brutality and racism have risen.
Educating Children in a Time of Masks
When it became clear that masks and online education would be a part of fall teaching this year, I know many of us in academia (and education more broadly) discussed potential challenges for accessibility when teaching with a mask. But as an academic librarian who is childless, I didn’t think about the broader potential impacts of mask wearing, or online learning, on children trying to learn early literacy skills.
YouTube Moves To COPPA Compliance
What does YouTube’s COPPA Compliance mean in the broader discussion about digital privacy? What does all of this have to do with libraries? Also, find out more about the privacy resources provided by ALA.
Common Sense Media and ‘Positive Messages’ About Youth
In Common Sense Media’s reviews, conflating the the amount of “inappropriate” content and the value of the messages within the same five-star rating system does a disservice to parents, youth, and art as a whole.
Euphoria and the Tyranny of “Positive Messages”
Euphoria recognizes that progress and growth don’t happen in a straight line. Works of art are not simply vehicles for morals and “positive messages,” and Common Sense Media’s rating system over-simplifies the relationship between art and virtue.
‘How can I find out?’ Fielding teens’ reference questions
When faced with challenges to freedom of expression or limitations on access to information, teens require caring support and reliable information.
Visible or Not: Library Access for LGBTQ Youth
Youth need a space where they feel accepted, and the library can be that space.
Maurice Sendak and the Librarians: When Censorship Came From Within
Maurice Sendak’s 1970 book In the Night Kitchen is a dreamy book about a naked little boy named Mickey working to keep from getting baked in a cake. But from the moment the book was published and continuing into the 21st century, Mickey’s nudity has unsettled reviewers, parents and even some librarians.
50 Years of Tinker v. Des Moines
Last month, as Mary Beth Tinker and John Tinker celebrated the 50th anniversary of their landmark legal win on behalf of students’ First Amendment rights, they make connections to today’s student activists and the issues students and citizens of all ages are moved to protest.