Banned Books Week – the Celebration Continues!

As part of our continuing celebration of Banned Books Week, here are three more books that were challenged and/or banned in 2008-2009. Again, this is according to Robert P. Doyle’s published list.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens):

This story carries Twain’s Huckleberry Finn character over from his book Tom Sawyer. Huck is kidnapped and eventually escapes. He travels down the Mississippi River with a boy named Jim. Throughout their travels and adventures, they become friends and learn many lessons.

Huckleberry Finn was not banned, but it was challenged by a school district in Manchester, Conn., because of its racial issues. Teachers must now attend seminars on how to deal with the race issues presented in this book before teaching it.

Twilight Series by Stephenie H. Meyer:

For those of you who haven’t seen the movies, Twilight “is the first book of the Twilight series, and introduces seventeen-year-old Isabella “Bella” Swan, who moves from Phoenix, Arizona to Forks, Washington and finds her life in danger when she falls in love with a vampire, Edward Cullen. The novel is followed by New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. A film adaptation of Twilight was released in 2008. It was a commercial success” (Wikipedia).

Twilight was banned and later reinstated at a California middle school. It was also challenged at Utah’s Brockband Junior High School because of sexual content in the series’ fourth installment.

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult:

A movie was recently made about this novel, which tells the story of a young girl who sues her parents because they want her to donate a kidney to her sister. Middle schools in Clawson, Mich., banned this book because they thought the subject matter was “too racy” for middle school students.

Check back tomorrow for our final blog that will feature three more recently banned and/or challenged books. Also, check out the Banned Books Week displays and sales going on at the KU Bookstore in the Student Union Building.

-CS

Books Challenged and Banned in 2008-2009

To continue our celebration of Banned Books Week, this week’s blogs will focus on books challenged and banned in 2008-2009; the books and information about the bans and challenges come from Robert P. Doyle’s published list.

It’s hard to believe books are still challenged and banned today, but here are three that have been recent targets.

Grendel by John C. Gardner:

Most of us will come across this book at some point in our academic careers if we read British literature. Grendel was published in 1971, and retells the story of Beowulf from the Grendel’s point of view; Beowulf is an 8^th century Anglo Saxon epic. According to Amazon.com, “Beowulf is the earliest extant poem in a modern European language. It was composed in England four centuries before the Norman Conquest. But no one knows exactly when it was composed, or by whom, or why. As a social document this great epic reflects a feudal, newly Christian world of heroes and monsters, blood and victory and death.”

Grendel was challenged in the Sherwood, Oregon school district after being added to the sophomore honors English class’ reading list. Parents were concerned about scenes in the novel that describe torture and mutilation. Grendel was not banned, though, and remains on the reading list.

King & King by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland:

King & King is a fairy tale about gay marriage. This book was read to a Lexington, Mass. second grade class as part of a unit about different types of weddings. Parents of one of the second-graders were offended that the teacher read this book, and claimed the teacher was trying to “indoctrinate” the children with a “homosexual agenda.” The book was not banned, despite the efforts of a group known as the Parents Rights Coalition, which fights to remove books in the state schools that discuss homosexuality.  This Coalition took their case to court, claiming this book’s, and other books’, homosexual themes are religiously offensive. The case was overruled each time, and the Coalition is planning on appealing it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya:

According to CliffsNotes.com, “In Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima, set in New Mexico in the 1940s, young Antonio becomes obsessed with questions about destiny, life and death, and good and evil. When elderly folk healer Ultima moves in with Antonio’s family to live out her last days, Antonio turns to her for guidance when he loses confidence in parental viewpoints and Catholicism. Bless Me, Ultima is the first of a trilogy in which author Rudolpho Anaya skillfully sets up dialogue between Antonio and Ultima.”

This book was banned from Newman, California’s Orestimba High School’s English classes. The superintendent banned the book after complaints that the book is profane and anti-Catholic.

Who knew books would continue to cause so much controversy and even lead to taking a case to the Supreme Court? Check out Wednesday and Thursday’s blogs for information about more books banned in 2008-2009.

-CS

What’s Happening to the Children’s Lit Books?

Please bear with us while we impart a bit of logic at KU. If you are on the ground level and see books in the children’s collection (Library Science Collection) being shifted, it is part of a plan to bring together that collection and put it into a better arrangement. YEA!  It will be a great benefit or our patrons in the end, but it is a bit confusing while we shift. Please ask for help as you need it. The books are all there while we work. (Special thanks to the Library Science students for doing the shifting!)

The first phase is going on now–to flip the fiction books so that they run from easy fiction books (A to Z) then adolescent fiction (A to Z). The second phase was to bring the biographies and non-fiction over to the tall shelving past the half-shelves. Although our original plan included enough shelving and space for this endeavor, we can no longer use that logical plan. We will still try to get all of the non-fiction over to that side, but we’ll have to work on an alternative plan to get the biographies over there.

If you like these changes. Let us know. We like to hear feedback from our users!

Top Web Sites of 2009

PCMag.com recently published its “Top 100 Web Sites of 2009” list. According to PCMag, the list contains “50 classic Web sites and 50 new and/or undiscovered sites you haven’t heard of yet.” A committee at PCMag solicited nominations for the sites, and then compiled the list.

The list includes these sites:

*Google
*IMDB
*The Onion
*Pandora
*Twitter
*Flickr
*BBC
*Digg
*WebMD
*WorldWide Telescope

For the complete list, click on the link below. You will be directed to the page, and to view the site you simply click on the icon with each site.

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/0,1206,l=242492&a=242570,00.asp

To read the PCMag article, follow this link:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2350553,00.asp

-CS

Not Enough Time in the Library

The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 14, 2009

Not Enough Time in the Library
By Todd Gilman

As an academic librarian, I hear an awful lot of hype about using technology to enhance instruction in colleges and universities. While the very word “technology”—not to mention the jargon that crops up around it, like “interactive whiteboards” and “smart classrooms”—sounds exciting and impressive, what it boils down to is really just a set of tools. They’re useful tools, but they don’t offer content beyond what the users put into them.

Today we have hardware and software that facilitate communication, resource-sharing, and organization. We have computers attached to projection systems for lectures and demonstrations; social-networking and messaging sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter; virtual spaces like blogs and wikis in which to collaborate; course-management software like Blackboard/WebCT, Sakai, and Angel to supplement or even take the place of the physical classroom; and programs such as RefWorks, Endnote, and Zotero to keep track of and format bibliographies.

Oldsters tend to associate those tools with youngsters. Many faculty members, especially senior ones, believe they are less adept at using those tools than their students are. While that much may be true, the assumption that follows—that when it comes to technology, today’s students need no faculty guidance—most certainly is not.

While college students may be computer-literate, they are not, as a rule, research-literate. And there’s a huge difference between the two.

The fact that some professors do not recognize the distinction means they effectively assume that their students find themselves as much at home in the complex and daunting world of information as when they upload 25 photos from their iPhone to Facebook and text their friends to announce the latest “pics.”

Academic librarians are eager to offer sessions for students on what we call “research education.” But the mistaken assumption that students don’t need it means that many professors don’t ask us to meet with their students, or even respond to our enthusiastic offers to lead such sessions. Students don’t need to be taught anything about working online, because they were practically born digital, right?

Research education is not tools education. Research education involves getting students to understand how information is organized physically in libraries, as well as electronically in library catalogs and in powerful, sometimes highly specialized commercial databases. It means teaching students to search effectively online to identify the most relevant and highest-quality books, articles, microform sets, databases, even free Web resources.

Students do not come to college armed with those skills, nor are they likely to be acquired without guidance. Yet students desperately need such skills if they hope to function effectively in our information-driven economy. As Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams opine in The Craft of Research: The “vast majority of students will have careers in which, if they do not do their own research, they will have to evaluate and depend on the research of others. We know of no way to prepare for that responsibility better than to do research of one’s own.”

Professors may need to be reminded that online searching requires a set of skills that are the strong suit of academic librarians—and that we are eager to impart those skills to students. Faculty members may also need to be reminded that developing those skills takes practice. Would professors assume that students possess the critical-thinking skills necessary to make sense of an early-17th-century document related to the Plymouth Bay Colony just because they grew up in Massachusetts?

Here, then, are some tips for faculty members on how to augment students’ research skills.

Spend a class period on search strategies. Show students how to find their way around the library’s electronic catalog (for books) and a few general databases such as Academic Search Premier, those in the WilsonWeb platform, and LexisNexis Academic (for articles). A librarian can conduct a session with your students on those sources and, more important, demonstrate effective search strategies to avoid frustration and wasted time. Make the session mandatory, hold it during class, and be sure to attend it, to show you mean business. Even better, teach the session with the librarian, or at least chime in to stress key points.

Take a tour. Introduce students to the physical spaces of the library, especially the reference desk, the reference collection and its contents, the periodical reading room, and the stacks—including how to read a call number. Believe it or not, many students’ familiarity with their college or university library stops at the study spaces.

Reinforce the lesson with an assignment. Devise a for-credit assignment that echoes what you and the librarian have shown the students. It should emphasize key distinctions that they often forget, such as the need to search the online catalog for books but library databases for articles. You might also incorporate a component that challenges students to evaluate the quality of information they find, such as comparing the top results returned by a keyword search in Google with those returned in Academic Search Premier with the peer-reviewed box checked. Which results are more authoritative, and how can students tell?

 Take it a step further. Perhaps you want to do more than require a single assignment, such as encouraging students to use library materials in support of arguments in their term papers. It would be good to assign them Chapter 3 (pp. 40 to 55) of the second edition of The Craft of Research (available for library purchase as an e-book, so students don’t have to shell out extra). The chapter covers how to turn interest in a topic into a research question that’s worth trying to answer. It should reduce the likelihood that students will set out to write a paper on “the history of rowing on U.S. college campuses” and move them instead toward an argument supported by convincing data about, say, “the role that athletics plays in U.S. college admissions.”

In an ideal world, students should have multiple encounters with librarians, not just the standard 60-to-90-minute session that is most common now.

Faculty members in Yale’s English department clearly recognize the growing importance of research education: They have just agreed increase fivefold the number of undergraduates who will attend library sessions as an integral part of their introductory writing and literature courses (from 350 to roughly 1,900). Add to that our new “personal librarian” program, which pairs every Yale freshman with a Yale librarian, and you see the students themselves begin to be repositioned to value learning the craft of research. Let’s hope this example encourages others to follow suit.

The more time students spend with us, the further they can go beyond the basics into larger conceptual issues. Once they have determined what makes a good research question in the first place, they can move on to ask themselves (and the librarian) what is needed to answer specific questions they want to explore, developing the confidence that comes from knowing they are looking in all the right places for answers, and actually finding what they seek.

Todd Gilman is the librarian for literature in English at Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library.

URL:

 http://chronicle.com/article/Not-Enough-Time-in-the-Library/47410/

-CS

Fall Library Newsletter Available Online

The Fall 2009 library newsletter is now available online. This semester’s newsletter will introduce you to a number of new staff and student employees, talk about the upcming LibQual survey, inform you about the new student focus and opinion groups, and give you some fun library news.

Check it out at this link:

http://www.kutztown.edu/library/about/newsletters/Fall2009News.pdf.

-CS

Banned Books Week – The Top 5

Books have been challenged since the early days of the 20^th century. Even in 2009, many books continue to be challenged because people find the content offensive. In honor of Banned Books Week, here is a list of some classics that have been banned. These are the top five novels off of the “Top 100 Novels of the 20^th Century” that have been banned and/or challenged throughout the last century. Some are still challenged and banned today.

1.  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldBook summary from Amazon.com: “Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach. Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby – young, handsome, fabulously rich – always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.”

   Reason for banning: A Baptist College in Charleston, S.C., banned it in 1987 because of language and sexual reference.

2.  The Cathcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 

   Reason for banning: Attempts have been made to ban this coming of age story since1960. These attempts were made based on obscene language and situations, excessive vulgar language, and sexual scenes. This book is still challenged and sometimes banned today for these reasons.

   Book summary from tmtm.com/Google Books: “Superficially the story of a young man’s expulsion from yet another school, The Catcher in the Rye is in fact a perceptive study of one individual’s understanding of his human condition. Holden Caulfield, a teenager growing up in 1950s New York, has been expelled from school for poor achievement once again. In an attempt to deal with this he leaves school a few days prior to the end of term, and goes to New York to ‘take a vacation’ before returning to his parents’ inevitable wrath. Told as a monologue, the book describes Holden’s thoughts and activities over these few days, during which he describes a developing nervous breakdown, symptomised by his bouts of unexplained depression, impulsive spending and generally odd, erratic behaviour, prior to his eventual nervous collapse.”

3.  The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 

   Reason for banning: This has been challenged since being published in 1939. It was banned for reasons such as vulgar language, using God and Jesus’ name in a profane manner, and inappropriate sexual references.

   Book summary from Amazon.com: “Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer prize-winning epic remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of the Joad family who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel west in search of the Promised Land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and broken dreams. Out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human, yet majestic in its scale and moral vision; an eloquent tribute to the endurance and dignity of the human spirit.”

4.  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 

   Reason for banning: This novel was first banned in Eden Valley, Minn, in 1977 for its use of “damn” and “whore lady.” Other places banned the books because they claimed it was trashy or represented institutionalized racism. It was also banned due to its profanity and racial slurs. It was recently banned in Cherry Hill, N.J. because people feared the race relations in the novel would upset children.

   Book summary from Amazon.com: “Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus–three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.”

5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker 

   Reason for banning: This book has been challenged and banned since 1984, and continues to be challenged and banned today. It has been banned based on its sexual explicitness and its portrayal of homosexuality and rape, as well as its ideas about race relations.

   Book summary from Google Books: “Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to “Mister,” a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister’s letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.”

 For more information about Banned Books Week, go to www.ala.org and click on the “Issues and Advocacy” link on the left. Then click on “Banned and Challenged Books.” Also, check back next week for information about books that were banned in 2008-2009. Some of these are more modern books, while others are classics that continue to be challenged and banned.

*Information on Banned Book Week and the books taken from www.ala.org, unless otherwise cited.

-CS

Banned Books Week – Celebrating Your Freedom

Since 1982, the last week in September has been designated by the American Library Association (ALA) as Banned Books Week; this year it takes place from September 26-October 3.

Banned Books Week is meant to celebrate your freedom to choose which materials you want to read. It is seen by many as an extension of everyone’s right to free speech. Many view stifling creative freedom of expression in the same light as stifling political freedom of expression. They see banning books as a step in the direction of banning free speech.

Each year the ALA celebrates your freedom to choose what you read by highlighting many of the books in the U.S. that have been challenged or banned. When a book is challenged, there is an attempt to remove it from a library or classroom curriculum. When a book is banned, it actually is removed.

Concerned citizens and citizen groups have made attempts to ban certain books from the classroom and from libraries, however librarians and educators have fought back to keep these books on the shelves and in the hands of students. The majority of book challenges are made because people see the book as too sexually explicit, as having too much offensive language, or as being unsuitable for age groups.

Here are some books that have been challenged and/or banned:

*The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
*Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
*Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
*The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein
*Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
*Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
*1984 by George Orwell
*Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
*Animal Farm by George Orwell
*Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
*An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
*Rabbit, Run by John Updike (a local author from Reading, Pa.)

For more information about Banned Books Week, go to www.ala.org and click on the “Issues and Advocacy” link on the left. Then click on “Banned and Challenged Books.” Also, check back tomorrow and next week for information about books that were banned. Tomorrow’s blog will focus on classics that have been banned. Following blogs will focus on books that were banned in 2008-2009. Some of these are more modern books, while others are classics that continue to be challenged.

*Information on Banned Books Week taken from www.ala.org.

-CS

Win Cash at KU!

Help us help you by taking a quick library services survey. Tell us what you think about library services, and enter to win these great prizes:⁺

*$100 cash grand prize
*Macy’s gift card
*KU Bookstore gift bundle
*Mark’s Sub coupons
*Library water bottles, mugs, and other library accessories.

The library survey is a LibQUAL survey. This is an internationally known survey that measures the quality of our library services. It is only conducted once every three years, so don’t miss out on your chance to give us your input so we can improve our services to you.

Look for an email announcing the survey, or look for a link on the library home page; these will be coming soon. The survey runs 10/1-10/21.

⁺Must be 18 or older to complete survey. Only KU students are eligible for prizes.

-CS

Career Research Help

Have a quick question about your resume, cover letter, or those infamous job and internship searches? Then you’re in luck! KU’s Career Development Center is holding walk-in hours for quick questions on Thursday, September 16.

Typically you must make an appointment to discuss these things, but on Thursday Career Development is offering something similar to what Rohrbach offers at its Research Help Desk. Career Development will let you walk in without an appointment and ask your questions. Of course you can always make an appointment and sit down with a career counselor to discuss any questions or concerns you may have about the job search, resumes and cover letters, or even deciding whether or not to attend grad school. But if you just need a quick answer, then Thursday is the day for you.

In addition to career counselors being available to answer questions, there are many other great services you can take advantage of. For example, the career counselors regularly host information sessions on finding a job, writing resumes and cover letters, and networking. There is even a session on the forms you will be expected to fill out your first day of work. Career Development also hosts senior orientation sessions that are going on now; check for when your college’s orientation is scheduled to take place.

Not only does the center offer information sessions, but it also offers mock interviews with counselors and with real employers, resume and cover letter review services, and an etiquette dinner.

If you are just starting your job search and still don’t know what’s right for you, then stop by the center and check out its career guide collection. The center has its own lending library, but if there’s a book they recommend that they don’t have yet or is already checked out, then you can either get it in Rohrbach Library or order it via Rohrbach’s interlibrary loan.

It’s just as important to know what career services are available to you as it is to know what research services are available to you. So take advantage of the career services KU offers so you can stay ahead in the job search.

Career Development Center
113 Stratton Administration Center
Phone: 610-683-4067
Fax: 610-683-4069
Email: careers@kutztown.edu
Web site: http://cdc.dept.kutztown.edu/

Hours: Monday-Friday 8:00-4:30, Tuesdays 8:00-6:00

-CS