Welcome to Banned Books Week, 2019. I’ve made it something of a tradition to participate, and this year is no different! I invite you to join me this year, share your blog posts and check out what others have to say. The link will be open the entire week!
According to the American Association of School Librarians, “there is a growing censorship issue in schools and school libraries – overly restrictive filtering of educational websites reaching far beyond the requirements of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA).”
With this in mind, today is Banned Website Awareness Day. There are a number of instances where information access has been filtered in extreme, certain websites challenged, and even widely used search engines removed!
The rise of internet technology has certainly presented new challenges when it comes to questions of censorship. While a school library can limit their book acquisition to those books that are relevant and reasonable for their population (an elementary school is unlikely to face any objection if they don’t stock copies of 50 Shades Of Grey, for instance), the internet provides a wide open web of information that can be harder to filter to keep appropriate without undue censorship or violating a students First Amendment rights.
I recommend browsing through the information provided by the AASL to learn more about this issue!
Just posted another banned book – the pop culture farce “Candy” – which was banned AND prosecuted – and I linked to your story as well…here it is if interested – https://johnrieber.com/2019/09/25/banned-book-week-tastes-forbidden-candy-wednesdays-bookmobile-has-fascinating-candy-men-to-talk-obscenity-and-literature/
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