Category: censorship
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The Freedom to Be Totally Ignorant
“I’m not afraid anymore so go for it.” — Jane Elliot The Oprah episode above aired in 1992. Jane Elliott first did her blue eyes/brown eyes experiment the day after MLK was assassinated. (Note, that transcript contains offensive racial terms.) (If you’re not familiar, in brief, Jane did a lesson in prejudice with her class…
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to all the garbage library leadership I’ve loathed before
To the male manager who told me I needed to work two nights when everyone else only worked one because I was “single and had no one to go home to”; To the same male manager who cited my musical ability as a pro when I was hired, but then wrote on my performance evaluation…
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reasons I despise banned books week
BBW is already widely used internet lingo, and it ain’t about books. Why are we promoting something we’re against (banning books) instead of promoting something we are FOR (the freedom to read)? It confuses library users. I’m sure nearly every library worker has a story about someone seeing a “banned books” display and saying something…
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We Live in a World of Bad Text
Obamacare vs The Affordable Care Act Fake news versus propaganda . . . (one more) Alt–right versus white supremacist ripped from the womb vs late term abortion * * * There is power in names, in language, in how we describe things and what we call them. When female authors write under male pen names (or just use their…
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George Carlin, MLIS
Within the context of ALA policy and the professional practices of librarianship, critical examination of beliefs and viewpoints does not, by itself, constitute hostile conduct or harassment. Similarly, use of sexual imagery or language in the context of a professional discussion might not constitute hostile conduct or harassment. http://alamw14.ala.org/statement-of-appropriate-conduct When Carlin rattled off the seven…
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Accentuate the Positive
You’ve got to accentuate the positive Eliminate the negative And latch on to the affirmative Don’t mess with Mister In-Between You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum Bring gloom down to the minimum Have faith or pandemonium’s Liable to walk upon the scene Johnny Mercer I like being nice. It’s true. There’s nothing…
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the ethical librarian
I started writing this post in October of 2010, and it’s an issue that still bothers me today. On a listserve recently there was a pretty brutal backlash against a teen librarian who essentially said he was burning out and that (I paraphrase) “So many teens suck these days and I don’t want to serve…
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ain’t no cure for the summertime blues.
OR: Love is the higher law. I’m in a summer funk, y’all. The heat, humidity, and summer reading program account for a lot of this funk. Now that the program is winding down, there is much fretting about the NUMBERS! I am paranoid that my new program for pre-readers has negatively impacted the number of…
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we don’t need you, either.
The Summer Reading program. It is the event that youth librarians spend almost their entire year either preparing for or recovering from. Children and parents descend, en masse, worked up into a froth of excitement from the promotional tour–books were booktalked, prizes were displayed and demonstrated, and the joy and pleasure of the program were…