 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am Krista Burns, your host at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Library Commission's weekly online event where we hold reports on all sorts of different activities that might be of interest to Nebraska librarians. We have commission staff that do sessions for us and we have guest speakers as we do today. We do these free one-hour sessions every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. And they are recorded as we are doing today so that if you are unable to attend a live session you can always go back and listen to any of our recordings that are out there. Today we have with us Karen Drivo who is the chair of the Nebraska Library Association's International Freedom Committee who is going to talk to us about Band Books Week which is coming up next week I guess officially. So go ahead Karen, introduce yourself and take over. Good morning everyone. Band Books Week begins a week from Saturday on September 25th and runs through October 2nd this year and I love the theme this year. Think for yourself and let others do the same and I love the graphics that go with that with the robots. But this is a week for everyone to celebrate their freedom to read and that's something that we often take for granted our freedom to read. And what exactly is Band Books Week? I have some samples up here of some books that have been challenged and that there have been attempts made to band or removed from library shelves. Band Books Week is an annual event that celebrates our freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. It's always held the last week of September and it highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship and that is done by spotlighting actual or attempted bandings of books across the United States. And we have these things happen right here in Nebraska. In fact there's been a few issues within the last six months of attempts to ban issues from school libraries here in Nebraska. Oh really? Yes. Okay Band Books Week has many sponsors and I've made a list of them here for you. The American Booksellers Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, of course ALA, American Society of Journalists and Authors Association of American Publishers, National Association of College Stores and it is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. So I think so many times when we think of Band Books Week we think ALA but there are many other sponsors to this annual event. Well why should we celebrate Band Books Week? Well we need to celebrate it because there are people and groups that want to censor a challenge books and they usually do so with the best of intentions. They have a desire to protect people especially children from ideas that they consider dangerous or controversial. But when you allow censorship it restricts free thinking and free speech and in some cases it may even restrict the truth. Oftentimes books that are challenged are just quietly removed from a classroom shelf or the shelf of a public or school library. Groups that denounce the reading of certain materials that they consider to be harmful restrict those items not only from their members but from everyone. And the big three when it comes to offensive topics but some people consider to be offensive topics that would bring about a challenge or an attempt to ban a book are profanity, sex or religion. I do think we could add political point of view to that these days as well. That has been an issue. That's kind of scary that you sometimes don't even know that this has happened that as you said quietly removed. You don't even know that something is being censored from you. That's right and in many ways censorship is really about gaining power or control over what others believe and think and that's where we get into the political as well. So that's why our forefathers felt that that was why it was necessary to include the First Amendment to our Constitution. So we can be grateful that we have our First Amendment that protects our intellectual freedom. Our intellectual freedom includes the right of an individual to decide what is right and wrong. It is our right to be exposed to different points of view and different experiences mostly through books and it helps us develop independent thinking. Now as we know some people feel very threatened by independent thinkers. That's why we need to protect individuals that have views that are different from the mainstream. We have to allow the unpopular views as well as the popular views to be voiced and those views might be expressed in books, essays, audio recordings, podcasts are on the internet. Now when I first came to Norfolk Public Library, oh my goodness, what's it been almost 23 years ago? I was searching for a book that we owned but I could not find. And I discovered a stage in the back room of books that had been deemed unacceptable to have open access to for young children. One of which was where the wild things are and in the night kitchen. I immediately brought those books out and put them on the shelf that we were going to circulate those items. I'm sure this isn't the only place where that has happened. I'm sure there are many school and public libraries that probably have areas. I know in our library currently we have what's called a closed stacks area where there are some adult items that are kept there and people can have access to them if they request them. Judy Bloom has been for decades now one of the most challenged authors and I love this quote from her that it's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written, the books that will never be read and all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers. So censorship creates a great deal of fear and that's another reason. You know, whenever Ben Books Week comes around and we display Ben Books or call people's attention to the number of books that have been challenged, people are just amazed. Even the Bible has been challenged. The King James version of the Bible. Many of our classic pieces of literature, many works by Mark Twain and others, but Charles Dickens, even Willa Cather, these are all authors whose works have been challenged and people need to be aware of this. When books are challenged, restricted, removed or banned, an atmosphere of suppression exists and the fear of the consequences of censorship is as damaging as damaging as or perhaps even more damaging than the actual censorship attempt after all when a published work is banned. It can usually be found elsewhere that unexpressed ideas on published works and published books are lost forever. And that quote comes from Robert P. Doyle, who every three years puts out a publication that's published by ALA about banned books. He has a brand new edition coming out this year that I encourage you to, if you don't have it, to order it for your libraries. It's a very important resource and I'm going to talk a little bit more about Robert Doyle in a little bit here. Another reason why we need to be aware of challenges and attempted bannings is because all of the top 10 frequently challenged books of 2008, which is one of the last years for which we have statistics, all of them will be found in library collections for young people. Now, I've looked over this list and every single one of them has an accelerated reader or a scholastic reading counts quiz for every single one of these titles. And I'm going to these next few slides. I'm going to show you some of these titles. Now, what the problem gets to be, if you have children or you have people coming into your libraries asking if you have the AR list for their school or the reading counts list, children are told that they have to read on a certain grade level. Well, you might have a second or a third grader that could be reading on a ninth grade level and so they have to read items for their tests at those levels. And as you can see from these top 10 challenge titles from 2008 that the subject manner certainly isn't going to be suitable in most cases for a second or a third grader. Yes, they may be able to read at that level, but they are not mature enough for the subject matter. However, even the kite runner I know has been challenged in many high schools and some of these books have been challenged all over the country at all grade levels. Well, in books week, we'll back up here a little bit. 1967, ALA founded the Office for Intellectual Freedom. And the mission of that office is to support the intellectual freedom as described in the ALA Library Bill of Rights. And that includes issues of censorship and the abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas. Now, at that time in 1967, Band Books Week did not exist. It wasn't until 1982 when the American Booksellers Association laid the groundwork for it at their annual convention. They had a list and a display of nearly 500 Band Books or challenged books, and they generated a great deal of interest in fighting censorship. And that was when Band Books Week was created. The first celebration was sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, and the National Association of College Stores. And as you can see from the list of current sponsors, the number of sponsors has grown over the years. And these groups create displays in bookstores and libraries across the nation to raise public awareness of censored books. And most importantly, to remind people that they have a right to read any book or publication without interference from any person or group. Now, since 1983, ALA has had the primary responsibility for organizing Band Books Week. Now, to celebrate Band Books Week, since 1983, ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom has developed materials, media releases, products and events to support the celebration of Band Books Week. And they also maintain a list of Band Books, including the most frequently banned children's book, the most frequently banned adult books. I'm just going to take you to try this out. We're going to go to the Office for Intellectual Freedom's website here. And if you scroll down the page, you'll find that you have a section for Band Books Week. And you'll find the Band Books Week merchandise events. They have a great press kit that you can use. They also have the list of frequently challenged books, what to do if you have challenges, two library materials, lots of ideas, resources, a calendar of events. There's a wealth of information there that I encourage you to take a look at. We're going to go back to our slideshow. Let's see if I can, there we go. Yeah, you got that down. No problem. Hey, I'm surprising myself. Many communities organize activities for Band Books Weeks through local libraries, booksellers, schools, interested organizations. And people are encouraged to read books that are on the list of banned books, participate in events, and share the freedom to read. There are, there's even a Facebook and MySpace pages that have been set up for Band Books Weeks so that readers can follow and stay informed. About events and even get some good ideas, especially from the Facebook page of what other people are doing around the country and interesting ways that they are choosing to celebrate Band Books Week. And I'm going to take you to the Facebook page. And while you're doing that, I just want to mention to everyone, all of these websites and links and everything that Karen's going to will be available when we put the recording up for you. So you don't have to worry about trying to scribble all this down and write it down for yourself. We'll have it all linked when we send you the email about the recording. But this is just very interesting to read through. You can see where communities where there are challenges taking place, how other libraries and places around the country are going to celebrate Band Books Week. And you can contribute to it and let people know what we're doing here in Nebraska to celebrate. Oops, sorry about that. There was my granddaughter. Also, there's on YouTube lots of little short video clips that celebrate Band Books Week. And I'm going to show you a couple of those. This first one was done I believe in 2008. But you know, we have so many creative young adults in our communities that love making little film clips and posting things to YouTube. It would be fun to sponsor a contest in your community to have some youth create something for Band Books Week. And this is just going to show you what some other areas have done. I don't think the audio for that video is coming through, but the picture is definitely. Is there music or something on it? Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. Yes, there is music. Still very impressive even without the music. Okay, sorry about that. Sometimes it doesn't carry through through the webinar system. That's fine. Okay, well, let's see. Maybe this one won't work either, but let me try it. And if you aren't getting the sound, let me know and I'll just cut it off. But this one was from 2009. Ben, do you have a microphone like you can put up to your speakers that could carry it through? Okay. That might work. What are you guys doing in the library? You guys are never at the library. There you go, that works. What is it? A phone book? Why were you going to ban the phone book? Fine, keep it. But that means we have to keep all the ones I've thrown out so far, including the phone book. This isn't as easy as the books ban. There's a lot of books here and all of them have something I disagree with. Dude, this is why banning books is a bad idea. I'm listening. There are a million books out there that you don't have to read that other people might really enjoy. As an American citizen, to read whatever we want. I mean, how would you like it if somebody came along and banned your favorite book? Everybody poops, they would dare. Well, I've always wanted to write a novel, something like Ulysses. I thought somebody was just going to ban it. Something epic. Okay, prologue. I was a young rebel, a lone wolf. Well, that's more of a memoir, but I was thinking of fiction. Oh, sorry. Okay, start over. Chapter one. He was a young rebel, a lone wolf. Now, words are great. Okay, I hope you're all able to hear that all right. Yes, we did hear that one. That was great. I just love the, you know, it's a serious subject, but I love that they added humor to it. I think that humor is always effective. And I just, those are, there are many others on YouTube about banned books weeks, but these two really caught my attention. Now, in addition to ALA, there, you can find materials for banned books week from Upstart, Demco, Zazzle, the OD Company, Cafe Press, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, and many other vendors. If you're like us, your library is on a limited budget for promotional items for these different special celebrations and events. And I personally have always found that the products that ALA puts out for banned books weeks and many other events are awfully expensive. So you can find less expensive items definitely from Upstart and Demco and some of these other vendors that I've listed here. Okay, what are some resources that can help you celebrate banned books week? Well, I've put some websites up here. Our Intellectual Freedom Committee has a new website. If you haven't yet looked at that, there are some downloads on there. That could be helpful to you. There's also a Read, Write, Think organization that has a special section about banned books week. Random House has a great website that deals specifically with items regarding teens and banned books week. The Office of Intellectual Freedom, ALA, has several wonderful selections too that you could go to directly from these sites. And I don't know if everyone is familiar with AFKON, Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska. But if you are wanting a speaker perhaps to come to your library or community to talk about Intellectual Freedom and banned books week, they do have a Speakers Bureau. We also have our Nebraska Civil Liberties Union. They also have speakers that are available to come out. And here's the website for the First Amendment Center right here. And they have a lot of good resources on there that if you haven't looked at that website, there are some great things for adults and children. So there are some free downloads and printouts, coloring books, even all kinds of things about the First Amendment. Well, the Public Library is the most dangerous place in town. Well, we certainly hope so because we want to make sure we have something on our shelves that's going to offend someone. There should be something that would offend everyone. But we need to have those items to have a well-rounded collection and to have things that express a viewpoints of all kinds. ALA has a great deal of downloads that you can tap into. The main thing, okay, what can you do to fight censorship? Well, keep books available in your library and promote the freedom to read. And I'm going to go back to, hmm, I think I lost what I wanted up here. Let me, sorry about this, I thought I had that up there and ready to go, but obviously I lost it. In many communities, they have read-ins of selections from banned books. You may want to do a readers theater and I have created a Word document that has a readers theater that you could use as a prelude to doing readings from banned or challenged classics. And this readers theater just requires three narrators and they can be either male or female, makes no difference. And it goes through what banned books week is, why we celebrate it, why it's important. And then there's a list of challenged books then that you could have the narrators select to do some readings from. There's the 2009 ALA Top 10 most frequently challenged books. I'm sure you've probably seen many titles on there that you have read. And then there's the ALA Top 100 banned or challenged books for the decade of 2000 through 2009. Pretty amazing, these different titles. And the book that I recommended to you by Robert P. Doyle is set up in a way that you can find these titles and there's an explanation given. It will tell you in what locations these books have been challenged or there have been attempted banning. It talks about notable First Amendment court cases, lots of great quotes on the First Amendment. There's suggested activities of what you can do to promote banned books week and our First Amendment rights. And there's a title index, geographic index so you can look to see in what part of the country certain titles have been banned or attempted to be banned. But there's a wonderful section in there about how important it is to stay informed. Be aware of what is going on not only in your community around the country. There is a great PDF. Let's see if I can get to that now if I didn't lose that right here. This was done by Robert P. Doyle and it's a booklet that he did for this year on the theme think for yourself and let others do the same. I love that message of tolerance and oftentimes groups with very specific points of view don't want people to think or let other people think for themselves. But this goes through books that are challenged or have been banned in 2009 and 2010 and he gives a summary for them as he does in his book where he will tell you where, for instance, this one was retained in Antioch, Illinois, high school despite objections from parents who thought the language was vulgar and racist and it tells how it was reviewed and it does this for each one of the titles. And there are some people whose books are on these lists year after year after year. Joy's Sex is one that seems to make the list quite frequently. Perks of Being a Wallflower, Diary of Anne Frank, even Mary Downing Hawn who's been a Nebraska Golden Sorrow Award winner several times has for some reason this dead man at Indian Creek evidently because there was some mention of drug smuggling activities. Now, I read that book years ago and I don't even remember that section. Obviously, it didn't make a huge impression. Of course, Tekela Mockingbird is often challenged because of the language. Many things, in fact, let's see here. Lois Lowry often her Alice books are almost every year make the list. It looks like they saw this one. But Lauren Miracle, her books. I was reading, oh gosh, a blog and I didn't write down the author's name. But he was invited to a literary festival in Texas and one of the authors invited was Lauren Miracle. But then a parent complained to the librarian at a middle school in the huge school district that sponsors this festival. And because of this complaint from a parent to one librarian, Lauren was disinvited, uninvited, however you would say that. And since that became known, every other author that was involved in that event declined to appear and they had to cancel the event. So those folks were certainly standing up for intellectual freedom. Yes, I heard about that too Karen. I just found the information about it here. Texas Teen Literary Festival was canceled in Humble, Texas. And I remember seeing that as it played out that first the one author said, they disinvited me and then the other authors kind of, like you said, popped up and said, wait, what? And I hadn't heard that it was completely canceled. I just heard that they were dropping out and I thought it might make it, they would change their festival and say, oh wait, let's just back up and redo this and rethink it, but I guess not. No, I guess you don't mess with Texas. It's sad that those two had to cancel. Well, and one of the authors had had something similar happen to them and decided, you know, wait a minute, we really need to stand up and speak out instead of just quietly saying, oh well, okay. But Robert P. Doyle says, you know, you need to stay informed. Be aware of what's happening. Attend school board, library board and PTA meetings. Subscribe to particular print and online publications. Join the Freedom to Read Foundation. Whoops, the American Civil Liberties Union. There's even the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. There's a National Coalition Against Censorship. The American Book Seller's Foundation for Free Expression. There's all kinds of organizations you should be familiar with. And it's very important for every library to have a plan for instances when there are books challenged in your community. And I'm going to show you a great resource for that in just a few minutes. But you also want to be sure that you report censorship to ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom. And I don't think people do that nearly as often as what they do. I think there are far more challenges to materials than ALA is able to compile. And you need to write letters to public officials on the Bandbooks website and the OIA-O-I-F section of the ALA website. There's great press releases. There's proclamations for Bandbooks Week that you can use in your community. Create a special event at your library. Work with your community groups. And Support Bandbooks Week. Now, a great resource that we have that you should all be familiar with is the Nebraska Intellectual Freedom Handbook that was compiled by the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee, the Nebraska Library Association, the Nebraska Library Commission. And there's a checklist from managing censorship that you need to be familiar with the Nebraska State Laws, the Library Bill of Rights, and other documents regarding intellectual freedom. And do you have a written collection development policy? And you need to have that. And you need to have it formally adopted by your library's governing authority. And you need to make sure it's revised and updated periodically. And you need to have written procedures for handling complaints and reporting incidents. And you need to make sure that all personnel in your library are aware of the contents of your material selection policy and your procedure for handling complaints and reporting incidents. Make sure you openly communicate with community groups and their leaders that are served in your library service area. Be sure to have a vigorous public relations program. Be aware of groups in your community that are advocates for intellectual freedom and have resources they would use in your support. Be aware of state and national organizations, as well as, of course, the Nebraska Library Association and the American Library Association that advocate for intellectual freedom. And do you know who to call in case of a challenge? Well, we would hope that you would contact the Nebraska Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee, ALA, know of who you should contact that would be an attorney, perhaps, that is familiar with issues like that. That would be good to go to. Okay, let's go back. Here's where you can find the proclamation that you can use. It's not too late to get that to your mayor and city council to have a proclamation done for Band Books Week there for this year. So make sure that you're familiar with the Nebraska Intellectual Freedom Handbook that I just showed you. And there is a section on the ALA website of procedures for when items are banned or challenged in your area. Stay informed and be ready for any censorship challenges in your area. I strongly encourage you to purchase for your library the 2010 Band Books Week Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle, and that is something that's updated every three years. And this year, the eighth edition of the Intellectual Freedom Handbook, which is also an ALA publication, has just come out. And you can also always find updates to the Intellectual Freedom Manual online at the Office of Intellectual Freedom. And here's the link that will take you directly to those updates. And they do keep it very well up to date. And here's some interesting quotes that I pulled from Robert P. Doyle's book. Dwight DAIs and Harry said, don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed. And Heinrich Heine in 1823, he was a German poet. And I found this so interesting. He said, where they have burned books, they will end with burning human beings. And that just kind of gave me chills because this was long before the Nazi regime came into power in Germany. He was predicting that if they burn books, they will end in burning human beings. So get out in your communities and promote Band Books Week and the importance of our rights to read what we choose to read and everyone's freedom to read and select materials that they are interested in. So that ends my slideshow. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Karen, I just wanted to say here, I was just checking our catalog here at the library commission. It looks like we do have that Band Books Week resource guide that you're talking about here at the commission as well in our collection. So if you're going to borrow it and take a look at it before you order it, that's a good way to do it. And it looks like we have the 2010, if I'm reading this correctly, as well as a bunch of previous editions as well in our collection. So give a call to the library commission if you're interested in that and they can see about getting you a loan or something of that. That's a great collection. And then I wanted to mention that in Horn Book in the September-October 2009 issue, there is a great article by Pat Scales titled, What Makes a Good Band Book? And this is a fabulous article about challenged and banned books, things that people who challenge books are oftentimes looking for certain social issues. Books dealing with, they don't like books that deal with bullying, child abuse, drug or alcohol use, death, gangs, rape or any topic that they think causes young readers to contemplate the world's ills. But it's interesting that oftentimes censors who wish to control it children read, question the controlled society that Lois Lowry wrote about in the givers. So it's just kind of interesting. And she has a great article in there that's the Horn Book issue of September-October of last year 2009 and it's on page 533. It might be something you can find on your databases or in a library loan a copy of it from somewhere if your library does not carry it. Absolutely, yeah. So does anybody have any questions or comments for Karen? You can feel free to type them into the question section of your interface and go to webinar. Or if you have a microphone, let me know and I will unmute you and you can go ahead and ask your question if you want to. I haven't seen anything come in yet, but go ahead if you do have anything you want to ask. As we said, while we're waiting, see if anybody does have anything, these slides will be up when we put the recording up so you have access to all the links she had on here and we will also link to them as well when we put the recording up so you'll have all of that quick access. I'd say I do love the motto for this one, the think for yourself and the others do the same. That's just perfect as far as I'm concerned. Are you cheering them with the graphics of the robots? Oh, I know, they're just so cute. I just think we really need to educate people that even the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary has been challenged and attempts have been made to ban it. So I just think that we need to open people's eyes during this special celebration, September 25th through October 2nd. Definitely. We do have a request if you can give that article information again or we could also include it out there. The Horn Book article information, can you give that info again? Okay, it's the Horn Book, the September-October issue of 2009. It's an article by Pat Scales titled, What Makes a Good Band Book? And it's on page 533 in that issue. It's very well done. We do have a question, too. There's a play that you talked about. Is it available to anyone? Is it on the web possibly somewhere? Okay, it's supposed to be one of the downloads on the Intellectual Freedom website, but it hasn't made it up there yet. So if you would like to email me a request for it, I will put back up here the slide that has my email address on it right there. If you just email me and request the readers theater, I will send that word document to you. I would be glad to do that. And hopefully in the meantime, we can get it up on the Intellectual Freedom website. Well, I hope the background noise hasn't been too bad here. We are under some construction here, so I hope you have all been able to hear okay. Yeah, you mentioned that yesterday when we were doing our little technology test to end. Actually, I didn't hear anything today. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I didn't hear any noise or anything. Actually, I was just while you were doing a check. For anyone looking for an article from the Horn Book, I checked and it looks like in Nebraska Access, and the Wilson OmniFile Horn Book is included in there. So you should be able through the Commission's Nebraska Access system and that Wilson OmniFile be able to find that article that you were mentioning. Yep, other people said the same thing. Didn't hear any background noise at all. I do for other people. Great. I'm glad. I was kind of concerned about that. And I appreciate everyone that joined us today and call me or email me if you have any other comments or questions. And I will do my best to help you out. Absolutely, yeah. Looks like there's nothing else coming through urgently in the questions. But like Karen said, you've got her contact info there. Oh, some people are saying thank you. Thank you very much for the session. Give her a call or an email if you have any other questions about it. As I said, all this will be up and posted for you. And definitely start, you know, promote what you're doing for Bandbooks Week 2 at your libraries who are doing anything. Get it on your Facebook pages or your website or your blog and let people know that it's an issue out there. And it's not too late to do something for this year. No, because it's officially started in a week and a half. So yeah, you still have time. So thank you very much, Karen. That was great. Some information that we need. Thank you. Yeah. I hope you'll join us next week. Next week's Encompass Live will be our monthly tech talk with Michael Sowers where he'll answer any of your questions and talk about things that he's come upon over the last month. And he will also be talking about – talking to the staff at University of Nebraska at Omaha who have been circulating e-book readers talking about how it's gone, what they know for now. What they've learned about that. So feel free to register for that. Thank you very much. And we will say goodbye. Thank you. Bye-bye. Goodbye.