Headline Haikus

Public Libraries

should remain for the public

Please join the fight here.

Please sign this petition to oppose the privatization of libraries in California. Why? Because open access to information is a bedrock of American communities. Because that access to information should be maintained by public servants with a mandate to adhere to ethical guidelines of librarianship, rather than corporate boards with a shareholder mandate to profitability. Because challenging ideas are not always profitable.

This last point is the key. Suppose a book ignites controversy and calls for banning from the library. A professional librarian and a public library have an ethical responsibility to ensure that that book is still accessible to those who desire it. Now suppose a private library company is told by the angry patrons in a town [and dare we suggest that they may have partisan motivations] that if they don’t stop distributing the book (that is to say, if they don’t censor it) they will lose their town contract. Do you suppose that the profit-driven company, beholden primarily to its shareholders, will a) stand for freedom of information, or b) adhere to their commercial responsibilities and censor the book?

Now perhaps you’re saying, “Big deal, only obscene books and communist writings would get censored.” To that I would draw your attention to the following list of books that have been targeted by censors in the past, courtesy of the American Library Association

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
9. 1984, by George Orwell

11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son, by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway

33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

38. All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren

40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

57. Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron

64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence

66. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence

80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer

84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller

88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser

97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

(The gaps are because this list was originally compiled in direct reference to Modern Library’s list of the top 100 Novels)

If you believe that American communities have a right to uncensored information, please sign the petition.

Posted on March 5, 2011

Shelves bereft of books

the Lib-Tory dream realized?

Citizens resist

Library clears its shelves in protest at closure threat

quote : ‘The library is the one place where you find five-year-olds and 90-year-olds together, and it’s where young people learn to be proper citizens’. It’s crazy even to consider closing it.”

Tagged: This is austerity Nick Clegg David Cameron information libraries