Monday, September 24, 2012

What are you doing for Banned Books Week?





Banned Books Week is right around the corner! What do you have planned?

Every year, ALA provides suggestions and resources for celebrating the Freedom to Read, but every year, libraries show astonishing creativity in how they celebrate.  

Inspire us! What will your library be doing?

At my library, we just held our Fall Orientation Fair, and I created a 40" x 60" poster out of 5" tall cover images of the top challenged books lists for the past 3 years (provided by ALA, of course). We bought a lot of tiny sticky dots, and asked students to tell us which banned books they had read. It was a huge success! The best part? Enough students commented on the absence of Farenheit 451 from the poster that we had to grab a sticky note and make a place for them to make their mark.

We'll also be doing a book display (starting this week), and putting the poster out for more interactions (I'll replace the sticky note with a cover image this time!). We're also the location for a Banned Books Read-Out put on by the local chapter of the ACLU, the local public library system, the university's writing center, and a local bookstore. Can I tell you how inspired I am that the people in this community came together like that to do this?

Your turn. What will Banned Books Week look like at your library?





Tuesday, September 18, 2012

ACRL - Core Organizational Values Survey

ACRL has just announced a brief survey for its members on the topics of intellectual freedom and professional ethics.  This survey is intended as a first step towards ensuring that the organization is able to provide its members with the proper resources on these issues. 
If you are an ACRL member and would like to complete the survey, please follow this link.  One respondent will win a free ACRL webcast.  Also, if you have any questions, please contact Janice Welburn, chair of the ACRL Task Force on the Structure for Core Organizational Values.