September 2008

Banned Books Week: Sept 27 - Oct 4

Celebrate the freedom to read! Please don't take this democratic freedom for granted. Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to choose and express one's opinion. It focuses attention on the importance of making available a wide range of viewpoints to all who wish to read them. Observed during the last week of September each year since 1982, this is the 27th anniversary of BBW.

Each year, people ask libraries to remove books that offend them. Intellectual freedom, however, requires that multiple viewpoints be represented in libraries. For more information about challenged books, see the Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2007, Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century (2000-2005), and Most Challenged Books of 2007-2008 (pdf brochure).

“Intellectual Freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored. Intellectual freedom encompasses the freedom to hold, receive and disseminate ideas.” Intellectual Freedom and Censorship Q&A

Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., in Texas v. Johnson, said: “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

Constitution Day!

Constitution Day will be celebrated on Wednesday, September 17, 2008. Learn more about the U.S. Constitution by visiting the Library's list of resources for Constitution Day. These resources include links to the Constitution, to information about the Constitution, and to lesson plans.