Banned Books List

It's here - Banned Books week! I have gotten several very gratifying requests all day, including one from a student who actually checked one out with the intention of reading it. I have also gotten several requests for the list itself, too. There is a display of all the banned books right on top of the reference stacks; all ya gotta do is look. Still, if it's the raw info you're after, here you are (and thanks for reading the blog, by the way!):

1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
3. Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes
4. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
7. TTYL by Lauren Myracle
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
9. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

We don't have #1, #7 or #9. One and 9 are for an age group far below the Upper School: And Tango Makes Three is for very small children, and It's Perfectly Normal explains the changes your body goes through at puberty, and by seventh grade you're probably already there. That leaves #7. TTYL is a novel in text-message format. I don't object to the content - I just think the literary form itself is too ephemeral to have proven itself just yet. If it's still banned next year, then I'll buy it, but for right now it seems like a flash in the pan. And yet people were bothered enough by it to ban it!

Greatest books

Just to see how we're doing, I did a little digging in our OPAC. (That's our online catalog, what used to be the card catalog when it was still on, you know, cards.) Do we have the 100 Greatest Books Allegedly Ever Written? Actually, we're doing pretty well - we had all but about 10 of them and considering the physical size of the library that's fairly impressive. Naturally some personal favorites didn't make the list, but then again there were some titles that brought a smile to my face, forgotten old friends I should revisit one of these days. I spent the afternoon shopping around to fill in what gaps we do have, and that led me to wondering . . . is your favorite book in here? What is it? This is your library - make it so. If there's a book you're dying to read and haven't had a chance, let me know. I may not have much power, but I can do that - just ask!

Bite into a book!

Teen Read Week is on the horizon, and in this, my inaugural year as a real live librarian, we get to celebrate Books with Bite. The American Library Association gets to pick the theme, of course, and it's like they read my mind, for as you will soon see for your own selves, I absolutely loooove Halloween. I love everything about it: the costumes, the candy, the cooler weather, the vague suggestion of prankishness, even its connection to the celebration of seasonal change and harvest holidays.

As soon as my groovy graphics are done, I'll be putting up the book display. Vampire fiction is an obvious choice and we're pretty well-stocked at the Savidge-Bowers library, but how about books about food and cooking? Bite into that with your vampire teeth!

Falling forward

Things are happening: the cobwebs are being swept away, shelves are being shifted, posters are being hung. It sounds like spring cleaning, but it's not. It's autumn, my favorite time of year. Autumn for me is rife with possibilities and sweet rewards. The new school year starts in autumn, with new clothes, new classes, new friends. There are new books to read, crisp juicy apples to eat, and a breath of coolness in the air that makes you reach for a sweater. I love fall. I know everyone sees it as just the season that precedes winter, the metaphorical death of the year, but for me fall is always the start of something lovely.

I even like the candy corn.

Explore the forbidden in the library

This year, we celebrate Banned Books Week from September 27-October 4. I announced this to the faculty a couple of weeks ago and someone said, "Do they still ban books?" Sadly yes, now more than ever, though her optimism touched me. Each year a top 10 list of the most-challenged books is compiled. In 2007 alone, more than 400 books were subject to some form of challenge or censorship in our nation's libraries.

It is both inspiring and terrifying that people give this much accord to books. As much as people ignore and demean literature these days, they certainly give it a lot of attention when it says things with which they do not agree. In books are contained ideas and when ideas themselves are suppressed, oppression is the rule of the day. First you can't read that, then you can't say that, then you can't think that . . . where does it stop?

In a school library this is a particularly ponderous situation for the librarian, at least on the surface: it's my job to choose books and materials from the hundreds of offerings out there, and I have to decide what's suitable or not based on audience, budget, relevance, and other factors. What might be appropriate for one child may not be appropriate for another, but that's really up to that particular child's parents, at least while he's a minor. Taking a book out of the library at one individual's suggestion makes it impossible for anyone else to access it, and this means that one person's voice speaks for all of us. And that's pretty much what censorship is, one of the ugliest things on earth. Want to know more about your rights? Try the American Library Association.

Quiet, please

Today should have been quieter than usual, with the seniors away to meet their kindergarten buddies at the Lower School and the freshman on an all-day field trip, and yet it wasn't. It was the loudest day of the past six weeks.

The juniors are noisy. Well, many juniors are noisy - I hate lumping all of you together like that, but there it is. Perhaps you could start policing yourselves. The strangest part is that the very noisiest among you seem to have the least sense of it. Here, let me help you: if you are talking more than six inches away from someone, and that someone does not have to strain to hear you, you are talking too loudly.

This is not a totalitarian regime and I do not get any particular joy out of shouting or silencing people. But it is a library, and many people are here to study quietly and when you disturb them I am going to be a pain about it. You can talk anywhere, but quiet studiers need to be in the library, so they win.

Project Gutenberg

Among the many things I overhear in the library are requests to photocopy multiple pages from a friend's book, because:
a) the photocopying student lost, forgot, or never obtained his own copy
b) the homework is due tomorrow.

This is very sad, for a whole lot of reasons. Helpless trees have to suffer and die a needless death, and it means wasting electricity on copies, plus the gas it cost to ship the copy paper itself. Stop the madness, people! There's an easier way, and it's totally free.

Project Gutenberg is a website devoted to digitizing and making available the literature of the world for free, in easy-to-download formats. Sometimes multiple editions of the same work or multiple translations are available, and you may not get the exact one you want, but reading any version is better than not reading it at all, especially when that essay is due. Anything that is old enough to be in the public domain will likely appear there, such as Beowulf, the Iliad, or Romeo and Juliet. Your favorite novel may not be there, but that won't help you get the A in AP English - this will. Try it.

STOP EATING IN THE LIBRARY

Today I visited a few of you to kindly request you not consume Goldfish crackers and SweeTarts in the library. It's not because I'm anti-food. (In fact, if you've met me in person, you'll notice I seem to like it pretty well!) And, actually, I do happen to think nothing makes a good book even better than a crisp juicy apple or a stack of cookies with a glass of milk. Alas, it is not to be in the library, at least not this one. Silverfish, pictured here, are attracted to sugary, starchy foods and once they're done eating that, they move on to paper, glue and book bindings. You may think your crumbs are microscopic, but a) the silverfish are pretty small so that's a meal to them; and b) I find whole pretzels, orange peels, and entire candies all over the place EVERY DAY.

I realize we have a lot of meetings in here, and muffins and such seem to be an integral part of them, so this may seem hypocritical. But those muffin-filled meetings are usually populated by adults who can find a trash can for the remains rather than shoving them behind the Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Trust me, there is no library in the world that has a "Yeah, it's totally OK to hang out and eat chips around the books" policy. Even hard-core specialty libraries with students who never seem to go home have rules about eating near the books.

But here's a hint: check the book out, take it home, and I will never know you read it while eating Froot Loops. In your Superman underwear.

What I overhear in the library

As much as try to change the myth, evidently there still persists the idea that the librarian is just the lady who checks the books out and says "shush." I didn't get three college degrees just to wave the barcode reader around, people - take a hint. I know some things, and the most important thing I know (at least where you're concerned) is how to get the information you want. Every day I hear groups of students talking about homework problems and they never know I'm right behind them, waiting to help. I'd never barge right in, of course, because eavesdropping is rude. In my case it's unavoidable because you're right in front of me, talking loudly enough for me to overhear, but I still like to maintain the pretense of your privacy.

Just this afternoon some students were apparently trying to make up some sort of set of rules, a new Magna Carta or Ten Commandments, that kind of thing. The king-daddy of them all is the Code of Hammurabi, which dates back to about 1750 BC and is full of all kinds of interesting aspects of Bronze Age Mesopotamian life, a document so interesting law students continue to study it today. But did anyone ask me the question that would get that answer? No. Because I'm just the lady who checks the books out and says "shush."

I overhear other things, too, by the way. Just yesterday at assembly we reiterated that "retard" is a hurtful, disrespectful thing to say and it's especially offensive to people who care about someone with a developmental disability: a brother, a son, a cousin, even just a friend. The R word popped out again today, but I am happy to report that one student did the right thing and corrected the other.

Wash your hands, OK?

This will be another short post, because your librarian is sick today. I don't know if it's from all the dust in the stacks, if my little boy is bringing exotic germs home from day care, or if all this exposure to adolescents is too much for my system to take, but whatever the case I am brought low and will be leaving early today. In the meantime, take care of yourselves and wash your hands frequently with soap. And if you can't do that, stop touching my phone!

Quoth the librarian . . .

It's here! The Edgar Allan Poe action figure with removable raven! It arrived this morning and I'm pretty sure some other unnamed foes were thinking of purloining it, but their tell-tale hearts gave them away. I swooped in and rescued it for the contest. Speaking of the contest, it's the Reference Question of the Fortnight Contest, of course, but I'm getting so many questions I may have to make it weekly. Maybe. Do let me interject this, though: I'm the one in charge of filling out the little slips that get folded and put in the basket for the drawing and if I decide your question's not worthy, it doesn't go in. Make it a good one. Last week someone gigglingly asked me what Spanish for "hello" was, in the hopes of upping the statistical chance of being drawn and while I don't want to quash the spirit of free inquiry, I'm not going to stuff the ballot box with dandruff just for the sake of bulk. Remember: the librarian is better than Google, but the very same quality of discernment that allows me to tell if you're still confused or need more help also allows me to figure out if you're kidding, OK?

Russian around

This morning I had a request for information on Russian poetry. (The best-loved Russian poet, by the way, in popular view seems to be Pushkin.) In response to this, I did a search of our electronic resources and found four articles and printed them out. After that, I found 19 books in our catalog as well and checked those out to the student. I flagged a few of the most important resources, tucked the articles in a book, and left a note on top of the stack for her to find during her lunch period. Naturally the gracious young lady was grateful, and I appreciate that, but I'll let you in on a little secret.

THAT'S MY JOB. No, really, it is. What does a librarian do? Why, sit around all day, occasionally say "shush," and check books in and out. Actually, no. Librarians organize and provide access to information. It's just that a lot of our day is spent shushing and checking, which sometimes gets in the way of what we really love to do, which is help people find the information they want. So this morning I might have gone a little overboard, but it's only because I was so happy and excited to receive the request. So ask away! Tomorrow it could be you walking away with 19 books, four articles and a note!

Short and sweet

That's me! But seriously folks . . . this post will be brief, because I am due at a meeting at 3:30 at Riverview High. My mission is to gather some information about competing in the Academic Olympics. Official sponsor Mr. Woods can't attend due to other obligations, and Coach Brewer tapped me to go in his place. Why?

Because in your midst, folks, is a former regional champion at both the high school and college level. That's right, we took it all the way to Kalamazoo before being edged out by Eastern Michigan University in 1995. My thirst for information has deep roots, y'know?

In closing, all you out there making a million copies of your college app: be gentle with my machine. It jams when overheated, so be sure to give her a chance to cool down every once in a while. We'll all be much happier. (There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere.)

What's plaguing you?

I love reference work - it's what I was born to do. This is no time for me to launch into my usual diatribe about how librarianship is not about reading, is not about shushing, is not about doing anything but inviting people to read . . . this is about what librarianship IS, particularly reference librarianship. I love reference work because it gives me a chance to solve a problem - someone needs information - and it allows me to be a kind of information detective. It's far more exhilarating than people imagine, and before your nerd detector starts beeping let me take a moment to remind you that Casanova was a librarian too, OK? In any case, today's reference flavor was Black Death (caramel sauce on the side!) I had at least four requests for material about infectious diseases that might be related to the plague, and I was never so happy to think about boils and pustules as I was today.

Happy Friday

I don't know about you, but I'm having a great day. This day is so great I wouldn't care if it were Monday - it's a great day! Today we announced the first winner of the Reference Question of the Fortnight Contest. Christian won a disco-ball air freshener for his locker or car and a ruler listing the world's greatest artists in chronological order for asking about the location of Sardinia.

After all that fanfare I ordered a bunch of new things for the library, including books in French and English and some more prizes for the contest. Gotta keep the momentum rolling, and people are catching on: today I helped people find information about infectious diseases, Biblical literature and Greco-Roman goddesses. Did I mention it was a great day?

Library litter

If you've been in the library after school this week, you've seen me in my after-school jeans in the stacks, shifting the reference books around, weeding out old materials and dusting the shelves. What I'm finding tells a mighty interesting tale: although Out-of-Door Academy students do break rules by eating in the library, they seem to be doing so with relatively healthy snacks. I did find several foil candy wrappers, but the majority of the offenses this week were orange peels, a banana skin and some granola bar wrappers.

You're hungry, I get it. I'd like to think you're so caught up in what you're reading you can't bear to go outside, but I suspect it's more akin to laziness. When you leave behind wrappers, crumbs, orange peels, latte cups, whatever, it attracts our friends from the animal kingdom and they sometimes enjoy a book buffet by dining on the paper and glue. And if they're really hungry and you're kind of sleepy . . . who knows what you'll find crawling in your hair?

So stop eating in the stacks. Just step outside, finish your snack, and get back to that delicious book. If it's circulating you can even take it with you and read it in the sunshine under a tree.

Behind the scenes

What's new? In the words of the B-52s, something big and lovely. It doesn't show to the outside world yet, but behind the scenes (and behind the desk) I am trying to bring about some exciting changes. Other than the nice new smell and the plant on my desk, I mean. Very soon I hope to be able to offer some really wonderful new online databases with great electronic sources, easily searchable and oh-so-useful for that term paper you're already thinking about.

This Friday I will be announcing the first winner of the reference question contest. I can't pick the best one because they've all been great, so I will have to leave it up to Fate and make it a drawing instead.

Finding my niche

As with any new venture, there's a period of settling in, meeting new people, getting the routine down. Here at Out-of-Door Academy there is an emphasis on excellence in academics, athletics and the arts, of course, but this being fall the athletic side of things is the most visible - right now I am watching the cheerleaders practice, saw a colleague bounding down the hall in shorts on her way to volleyball practice - and it leaves me feeling a little bewildered. Not the sporty type, you see. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for vigorous exercise in the fresh air, healthy sportsmanlike competition, and all that. I just don't like engaging in anything that involves me allowing missiles to be lobbed my direction at 30-plus miles an hour and that cuts me out of most extracurriculars.

Till now! Mr. Brewer announced today the school is looking into forming an Academic Olympics team. I helped my team make it to regional championships in both high school and college, and now, finally . . . here's a sport I can play! I hope there's a uniform. I mean, besides the regulation pocket protector.