Last fall, a parent in Texas demanded the removal of the book, Fahrenheit 451 from his 15-year old daughter's school library. (The subject matter of that book being so famous that its title has become shorthand for “censorship”.) And because you couldn't make this stuff up, the challenge happened the week after the American Library Association's “Banned Books Week” (which is in September unlike Canada's which is this week.)
Speaking of FTRW in Canada, here's a story in the UWO student newspaper about the FTRW student reading which I mentioned a few times in the past couple weeks and which was held last Monday featuring readings by various library students and one very cool eight year old.
For anybody who misses the sound of my voice pontificating away on all manner of stuff, I'll be on local community radio with the “Book Chick” tomorrow at 6pm Sask time (5pm Alberta time, 7pm Ontario time) talking about Freedom to Read Week and some of the related issues. You can listen live at: www.cjtr.ca
I'm going to see an eye doctor that afternoon so the drops mean a reading from “Behold The Man” like I did for FTRW last year likely won't happen. But you don't have to read from a book to tell “The Aristrocrats” joke – tune in tomorrow and see!
(The show will be re-broadcast next Wednesday at noon, Sask time if you miss the broadcast tomorrow.)
How bad is it? Through repeated trial and error, I got to question 15 before giving up completely (there are 110 questions). Then, when I had the answers, I still couldn't finish it! I'll post them sometime in the next few days. (Please don't harm yourself before then!)
Note: The game will take a bit of time to load but is worth it.
Guess who? I'd have guessed the FBI. Or the Library of Congress. Or a private collector with an interest in the area – someone like Larry Flynt. But nope, the biggest collection of banned books is owned by the Catholic Church. Their List of Forbidden Books is an index of books that the Church has considered against the faith since 1529. The index was created as a guide to a semi-secret library that is housed at the Vatican and which helped the Vatican control the flow of information for over 400 years.
[2007-03-11 – correction. According to Snopes which is an authority on hoaxes of all types, this story is not true. But then again, they only cite the Vatican librarian as the source for this statement and you might not expect this person to be up front about something like this. Truth or urban legend? Either way, it makes a good story.]
A pretty major announcement today from the Sask Government that by May, they will begin providing free wireless in the downtowns of our four largest cities – Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw and Prince Albert – as well as at some of our post-secondary institutions (which is probably a bit redundant since the Universities probably already have blanket wifi. But then again, it will be handy for visitors and others without an official log-in ID for those networks. I could see myself going out to U of R and hanging out at the library on a weekend to work on projects for instance, just because I like that atmosphere when I have work to do.)
Hopefully, they don't screw it up like Toronto did by requiring a cell phone number to access the network and that it has a good strong, steady signal. And speaking of T.Dot, where does this put Saskatchewan in terms of cities offering free WiFi in their downtown cores? Toronto, Calgary (limited), Fredericton, Kamloops are a few cities exploring the free option too apparently. (This article is also where I got that great quote about people doubting the value of sidewalks that is the title of this post. I've made a similar analogy to the information highway being like regular highways and something our government should provide for free, nationwide. Will that come to pass eventually? I hope so!)
Our province's official opposition, the Sask Party live up to their position by opposing anything that's positive for the province, just because they think that's their job. (It was fun watching them jump through hoops trying to oppose the new Family Day holiday while also saying it was a good thing for families.) Their opposition to this initiative is that, according to them, it's more about improving the province's image but won't work in reality.
I briefly thought about liveblogging the Oscars last night but realised that I'd just make the same snarky jokes that everyoneelsedid.
So instead, I thought I'd post hypothetical instructions on how you might view some of these films without leaving the comfort of your own home. 1. Hypothetically, download and install Azuerus, a bittorrent client. 2. Fictionally, download and install VLC, a video viewing client. 3. Imaginarily, visit OscarTorrent.com and follow links to films you might possibly want to view (or go directly to BTJunkie.org and do a search for the relevant title there. You can also search for other movies/music/TV shows/e-books as well I've heard.) 4. Supposedly, make sure you have ~800 MB (nearly 1 GB) of free hard drive space for each movie file you want to download. 5. Conjecturally, download the file by clicking on its name in the green box. Within a few hours (or a few days for some movies), the film will be on your computer, ready to view. 6. Leave the Bittorrent client open (you may want to pause transfers when you view the file to save processing power depending on how much memory you have) so that others will be able to receive the downloaded file from you, ideally until a share ratio of at least 1:1 is achieved (this is shown in the BitTorrent Client).
From my time on the Calgary Freedom to Read Week committee and having planned a student reading at FIMS, I’ve heard quite a few misconceptions about what “Freedom To Read” is about:
Here’s what Freedom to Read is not: 1. Freedom to Read is not limited to reading. Freedom to Read means you have the right to read or view any books, web sites, art, music or anything else that you choose to (or that your parents allow you to read/view if you are still not legally considered an adult.) 2. Freedom to Read Week is not a way to get around the law. Nobody who is in favour of Freedom to Read is going to promote your right to read things like child pornography, hate literature or other materials that have been declared illegal by the law. (Okay, there are probably a few libertarian-types out there who think that you should have the right to be exposed to *any* material of your choosing. I’m not going to split hairs on this. The majority of people who believe in Freedom to Read draw a line at illegal materials.)
3. Freedom to Read Week is not a way to force someone else to be exposed to something they don’t want to be. To put it another way, just because you can expose someone to challenged/challenging materials, doesn’t mean that you should. The Dutch Muslim cartoons last year are a perfect example – just because you have the right to put them on a poster and march in front of your local mosque to express your “freedom”, if you do that, you’re probably just being an asshole. 4. Sort of similar to the last point, Freedom to Read Week is not an excuse to force anyone (or their children) to read something they don’t want to. You can definitely suggest that somebody read something but if they don’t like it because of its sex/violence/language (those are the biggies that bring on the challenges) [edit: as well as “big picture” reasons like political, ideological or religious content], the choice of what to view (or not view) remains with each individual. 5. Freedom to Read Week is not an endorsement of materials. A library may carry Madonna’s “Sex” book (the most stolen book in public library history) and other challenged or controversial materials in the interest of providing the widest diversity of opinions. But it doesn’t naturally follow that all staff member have to believe in or agree with the viewpoints or attitudes presented in those materials (although they obviously should be supportive of the idea of Freedom to Read, being a core principle of librarianship.)
[2007-03-02 – discussion during an appearance on the Book Chick‘s radio show this week inspired me to expand my list by a couple points:
6. Freedom to Read is not a “left” or a “right” issue (I think people often believe that only people holding the opposite opinion of their own want to ban books.) Challenges come from both ends of the political spectrum and are just as likely to come on grounds of political correctness from someone on the left as on they are on morality grounds from someone on the right.
7. Whether you agree or not, freedom of expression doesn’t apply in certain situations such as regulated TV and radio broadcasts, regulated motion pictures, and also in private businesses. For example, Heather Reisman, the Chairperson of Chapters books here in Canada, came under fire a few years ago for her decision not to stock “Mein Kampf” in her stores even though she was completely within her rights as a private business person to do so, just as an organic grocery store is within their rights to not stock GM food or something. Although, just for the record, I didn’t agree with her decision either – I think bookstores fill a certain niche, different than a grocery or hardware store, and should be held to higher standards. Still, the book is available from numerousothersources, including your local independent bookstore and your local public library most likely, so it’s not as big of a deal to my mind as some people made it out to be.]
Bonus: Freedom to
Read Week is not something that only has meaning for one week of the
year. Challenges happen all year round and this is an issue that
shouldn’t be forgotten the other 51-weeks of the year.
It's Freedom to Read Week and to celebrate, I'm going to do a week's worth of posts on the topic. I know a lot of librarians, writers and others will be talking about this topic so I'm going to try to come up with some unique angles for my posts where possible.
But with that said, for today's post I'm going to borrow a recent post directly from Canuck Librarian:
The folks at Pelham Library
have posted a challenge for Freedom To Read week in Canada. They are
challenging readers to set a goal of banned or challenged books to be
read by June 30th, 2007. I've only set a goal of 10 for myself. Do you
think you can you beat me? Any suggestions for really good banned books
to read?
As “Freedom to Read Week” approaches, we
are once again rolling out our Banned Book Club. This year, we are
sending out the challenge to all readers worldwide to Take the Banned
Book Challenge. Set a goal. Read. Tell us about your book and let us
know how you did. There will be weekly (I hope) updates on the web page
( http://www.pelhamlibrary.blogspot.com).
Just
so you aren't alone in this, I have invited a number of “banned”
authors to join us. So far Meg Cabot (Princess Diaries and others),
Maryrose Wood (Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall In Love), and Canadian
author Deborah Ellis (Three Wishes, Looking for X and many others) have
agreed to meet the challenge.
Just what the world needs (and what I need too) – another blog!
I've set up a blog called The Universal, mainly as a place to link-dump stories and web sites related to the topic of online broadcasting which is a personal interest of mine (remind me to do a post about my summers selling door to door cable television subscriptions throughout rural Saskatchewan during my undergrad years!)
Unlike Librarian Activist
which I encourage you to bookmark/add to your RSS feed reader if you
like what I write on Head Tale, you probably don't need to follow this
new blog too closely as I doubt I'll post to it too often (especially
between my one or two posts I do per week on LA and my daily posts to
this blog.) Plus with a baby and hopefully a new job on the way sooner
rather than later, I'm guessing that time might just be at a premium
very soon.
Anyhow, I was able to do a
presentation on the topic of online broadcasting for a joint
Journalism/Library Science course (earning one of my highest marks in
FIMS – yay me!) and I decided to create this blog for a number of reasons:
1. a cursory search showed only professional and
industry sites on the topic 2. when I was working on the presentation, every day would bring a new development –
Google's purchase of YouTube, the Michael Richards incident and so on –
and the pace of developments in terms of both form and content regarding online broadcasting,
continues at a steady pace 3. as an excuse to try both the new Blogger software and also
Slideshare.net which allows you to upload Powerpoint presentations (aka
“the fuel that makes FIMS go”.)
Slideshare is pretty slick but lacks a few notable features – I tend to do fairly minimalist presentations in terms of on-screen text so this presentation might not make as much sense without the notes showing up below the display. It also doesn't include sound clips, transitions or animation which aren't as important but I do use a brief clip of Blur's “The Universal” to set the mood during the first slide of this presentation. (I also did a presentation for Advocacy which required an audio narration since it was for a distance course and students at both U of T and UWO had to be able to watch it. So something like that would be ideal for SlideShare – if it allowed audio (all 62MB of it!)) On the other hand, pretty much every image in this presentation stayed as a hot link so you can explore the (mostly) YouTube clips I used to illustrate my points.
Here's the presentation (how the hell did I get 129 views already? I'm the 20th most viewed presentation of the week right now and I only uploaded it a couple days ago. Sometimes I forget that there are millions of people online all the time looking at each and every thing that's available out there. Heck, I'm ahead of Erotic Photos from Dror Davidman by four votes! Oh, he only posted four photos in his presentation – maybe that's why. Uhm, not that I looked. )
[Edit: I uploaded a PDF of the same presentation that shows my speaking notes if you're curious. You'll probably have to view it fullscreen to be able to read them.]
(via MetaFilter which, as always, has some good discussion, other suggestions and related links)
Here’s a bonus FFL – “Virus“, a fun little Flash game that’s sort of like a multi-coloured version of Go. Useful if you've got your laptop in a class that's a bit underwhelming (not that I would knowingly participate in such activities myself of course.)
I say that I never played games in class as a joke but actually, now that I think about it, I never did play games in any of my classes. Did I surf around for info related to the lecture topic? Quite often. Work on assignments for other classes. When I had to. Surf aimlessly? Sometimes. Participate in chatrooms as each week of one particular class got progressively worse? Yes. I never even did instant messaging in my classes except for 1-2 brief occasions (also connected to a really bad class.)
I once asked a professor if the clacking of people's laptops bothered him when he knew people weren't taking notes on what he was teaching. (It's pretty obvious when the clacking continues at the same rate whether the prof is talking or not.) The prof sort of shrugged in a “what can you do?” gesture. Sam Trosow, who also taught in the law faculty, once compared library students who were the most part attentive and focused to his law students who *all* had laptops and were constantly clacking away, fairly obviously not paying attention. So the few people who did have laptops in his LIS classes didn't really bother him.
The ultimate though was one student I know who was a TA for an undergrad MIT class. He got so fed up one day, he raced to the back of the room and laughed at the scramble as a roomful of young kids tried to turn off monitors/close browsers/flip to some “real” work.
)
