photo by florian.b on flickr

As we approach the beginning of Banned Books Week, I am astounded to hear Mitchell Muncy, former editor of Spence Publishing and current operating officer for the Institute of American Values, trying to “shush” the American Library Association.   According to Muncy in his opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, the ALA is making too big a deal over nothing, exaggerating numbers of banned and challenged books by a parental force that is merely attempting to “guide their children’s education.”  Muncy further asserts that censorship cannot originate from non-governmental parties, that censorship is not really censorship if interested parties can still obtain the book through Amazon.com, and that librarians are the true censors for stifling  the demands of concerned parents who are just trying to do what is best for children.

It is evident that Mr. Muncy finds Banned Books Week irrelevant–at best.  He also seems to find the week’s activities to be confrontational and antagonistic.  He’s not the only one.  A number of groups have recently been speaking out against the ideas set forth in the ALA’s and AAP’s “Freedom to Read” statement.  This statement, originally written in 1953 in the midst of the McCarthy era, asserts that an individual’s freedom to determine what he or she reads is essential to our democracy.  It continues by stating that the individual is the best determinant of what reading material is right for them, and that this personal liberty should not be usurped by others claiming to know what is best for the population at large.

The “Freedom to Read” statement has been revised a number of times since the initial draft, and other publishing and anti-censorship organizations have also endorsed it.  It would seem, after the McCarthy era, that the need for this statement would have dwindled somewhat.  Not so.  While the government may not be leading recent attacks on books, a sudden surge of challenges to books in schools, libraries and bookstores led to the creation of Banned Books week back in 1982.

So what happens during Banned Books Week that makes it so controversial?  Well–authors and others read from these banned books.  They also talk about why some of these books were challenged in our schools, libraries and bookstores.  And participants restate their belief in the freedom to read. That’s it.  But this is too much for Muncy and others including the Family Friendly Libraries organization and Parents Against Bad Books In Schools (PABBIS).

Family Friendly Libraries is a national organization formed to address what they see as the growing problem of pornography and age-inappropriate materials found in our school and public libraries.  They provide lists and resources for individuals to use in their fight to remove offensive practices and/or offensive items from libraries.  They are also against Banned Book Week, stating in a 1998 press release,

“It is and has always been a negative event. The ALA uses that campaign to attack concerned parents and other citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights in behalf of their children and community. The ALA says it wants parental involvement, but negative opinions about library materials send member librarians into absurd public claims of ‘censorship,’ intimidating many parents from expressing their honest opinions” (Gounaud, 1998).

Were parents simply trying to regulate what their child reads, there may not be an issue.  More often, when challenges to books arise at a school or in a public library, parents and other concerned citizens are asking that the item be removed for all readers.  With different individuals having different interpretations of what is objectionable, how can one know if a book should truly be removed from circulation?  Parents Against Bad Books In Schools believes they have the answer.  They state on their website that,

“Bad is not for us to determine. Bad is what you determine is bad. Bad is what you think is bad for your child. What each parent considers bad varies and depends on their unique situation, family and values. The main purpose of this webpage is to identify some books that might be considered bad and why someone might consider them bad. Another purpose of this webpage is to provide information related to bad books in schools.”

FFL and PABBIS supposedly believe that libraries should be governed by community standards, yet they are national organizations that encourage others to question books within their libraries.  PABBIS evens goes so far as to list possibly offensive books along with offensive excerpts.  Muncy, in his Wall Street Journal article, claims that the ALA is “reacting so zealously against a few unorganized, law-abiding parents whose efforts, by any sensible standard, are hopelessly ineffective.”  Ineffective or not, there is often a larger national presence at work in many of these cases, making the push to remove items from library shelves a bit more sinister.  A recent move by a San Jose city councilman to impose filters on library computers was backed by the financing and legal department of the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona based organization that states on its website it is “fighting for religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and marriage and the family.” While the Alliance Defense Fund, Family Friendly Libraries, and Parents Against Bad Books in Schools are certainly within their rights to enter the debate, it is no longer only a community issue.

Mitchell Muncy asserts that if a book is banned in a public library or in a school, and not banned by the government as a whole, it is not censorship.  He feels that if a person could obtain the book from an online bookseller, then it is still accessible.  Many patrons who are turning to the library for their reading material are doing so because they cannot afford to purchase items themselves.  If an item is removed from the library, it is inaccessible for them and therefore amounts to censorship.  But Muncy’s main point in his attack against Banned Books Week seems to be that most of the books were not really banned, just challenged.  If Banned Books Week did not exist and if the American Library Association did not believe in the freedom to read, many of those challenges might have been more successful.  It is only through continued vigilance that these challenges to books in our libraries can be defeated before they become, in Muncy’s definition, truly banned.

Were Muncy and others to have their way, they would do away with ALA involvement in any library.  In a statement titled “What FFL Truly IS and IS NOT“, Family Friendly Libraries exclaims that they “support libraries in their efforts to sever financial ties with the ALA and remove documents such as the “ALA Bill of Rights” from their local library policies.”  If the first step for these groups is the removal of the Library Bill of Rights, will the next target be the First Amendment?

RSS Feeds
Some of the best marketing strategies may be the most simple.  Many libraries create newsletters to advertise upcoming events.  These work well if you can convince your patrons to actually read them, parsing out the announcement for that book reading they have been eagerly anticipating.  But what may work better for some library users is the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed of these announcements.  Events are then fed to patrons through an RSS reader (like Google Reader) as they are scheduled. A library can even set up separate RSS feeds for different types of events—for example, a feed for children’s storytime, another for adult literacy classes, and another for upcoming exhibitions.

Blogs
Blogs are another easy option for communicating library news and services.  Blogs can also be used to advertise collections in the library that may otherwise go unnoticed.  The San Francisco Public Library has a variety of blogs geared towards specific branches or departments, highlighting the best aspects of their collections.  The New York Public Library recently consolidated all of their department blogs to a main page, Blogging@NYPL.  If a reader would rather read the posts from a specific writer, however, they are able to subscribe via RSS to that writer’s posts.

One of the best aspects of blogging is the ability to connect with the public.  Jill Stover, in her article, “What’s Marketing Got to Do with it?”, points to the Hennepin County Library as an excellent example of libraries using blogs to discuss new initiatives in the library (2007).  The library recently posted information on the merger of the Hennepin County Library catalog with that of the former Minneapolis Public Library.  Library users were able to comment or ask questions concerning how the merger would affect them.  Responses by librarians to these questions ended up serving a dual purpose—they answered the patron’s question while leaving a public record of that answer, allowing answers to be visible to anyone else who may have a similar question.

But as Stover warns, it’s not enough for a library to simply write a blog. They must also invest time and effort reading and responding to other blogs–especially when these blogs are discussing your library. She encourages librarians to “do your own market research by searching for mentions of your library, librarians in general, or topics important to your patron base. You may be surprised by the contexts in which discussions about libraries take place and you’ll also learn a great deal about the lives of your patrons and their perceptions of libraries” (2007).  Commenting on other blogs also allows librarians to clarify information about the library or point users towards services they may not have previously been aware of.

Flickr
Libraries have been using Flickr for some time to post public photos of library programs, allowing the community to share in the library experience.  A number of great ideas for how to use Flickr can be found in P.F. Anderson’s article, “31 Flavors–Things to do with Flickr in Libraries” (2007).  Some ideas from the article include: creating a library photo tour, embedding photos from Flickr in the library website as a slideshow, and highlighting photos and items from rare collections (Anderson, 2007).  The Library of Congress has created “The Commons” on Flickr to share many of their images with the public.  Other libraries and museums have partnered with them in this venture and are creating a vibrant photo collection online as well as an example of the breadth of library collections.

Some libraries and library groups have found other creative ways to use Flickr, inviting the community to collaborate on photologs or projects.  One example is Library 101, the collaborative project between Michael Porter, David Lee King, and the library community to create a music video utilizing user-generated pictures involving the numbers 1 and 0.  As of today, over 500 pictures have been submitted for the project.  While most of the participants seem to be fellow librarians, a collaborative project such as this could be used in a public library setting to help build community among library patrons.

Gaming
Gaming is commonly seen as a way to get teens interested and involved in the library, but they have also started being used with seniors to promote activity and interaction.  Dale Lipschultz in, “Gaming@Your Library”, discussed an initiative at the Old Bridge Public Library to match up teen mentors with older adults, forging connections between the two groups while simultaneously teaching leadership skills to teens as they lead these older adults through various games.  By channeling this interest in gaming towards other aspects of the library (perhaps by supplying books or magazines with gaming references), libraries can capitalize on the increase in traffic that gaming brings in.

Video
Libraries are increasingly finding themselves in the role of video producer.  These videos are often either informative, showing off the various features of the library, or collaborative, involving library patrons (young and old) in their creation.  More often of late, these videos can be hugely entertaining.  I recently stumbled upon two creative examples, using video to announce upcoming events and/or library services.  The first, from the Collingswood Public Library, uses a silent movie theme to announce a fun run benefiting a library teen space.

The second video is from the Orange County Public Library.  In this video, G.I. Joe figurines are used as spokespeople, discussing the benefits of the library’s iPhone interface.  It is informative while showing off the library’s sense of humor and targets the younger demographic that is most likely to interact with the library using new technology.

But it is not enough to just create a video and stick it up on the library website, according to Aaron Schmidt and Sarah Houghton-Jan in their article, “How to Drive Traffic to Your Website” (2008).  They suggest that libraries take advantage of free online video hosting services such as YouTube and Blip.tv.  Both of the videos shown here can also be found on YouTube.  The Orange County Public Library has even set up their own YouTube page, allowing library patrons to easily locate all of their videos.

Social Networking
Finally, Twitter and Facebook are a free and easy ways to broadcast important library information.  The Missouri River Regional Library is currently using an application called Twitterfeed to pull previously published information from their Flickr pages, blog, press releases, and events pages and publish them again on their Twitter account (n.a, 2007).  Libraries with Facebook accounts can advertise upcoming events, photos, and services to fans, showing up in individual’s news feed.

These are but a few ways libraries can leverage the power of Web 2.0 to reach out and connect with their patrons.  Most of these services are quick, easy, and often free. In a time of tight budgets, libraries need to utilize these cheap but effective marketing strategies.

References

Anderson, P.F. (2007).  31 Flavors–things to do with Flickr in libraries. Webjunction. Retrieved August 1, 2009 from http://www.webjunction.org/marketing/articles/content/450126?_OCLC_ARTICLE%20%20%20%20S_getContentFromWJ=true

Lipschultz, D. (2009). Gaming @ Your Library. American Libraries, v. 40 (1/2), 40-3. Retrieved March 22, 2009, from Library Lit & Inf Full Text database.

n.a. (2007). Twitter and the Missouri River Regional Library. Webjunction. Retrieved August 1, 2009 from http://www.webjunction.org/marketing/articles/content/449819?_OCLC_ARTICLE%20%20%20%20S_getContentFromWJ=true

Schmidt, A. & Houghton-Jan, S. (2008).  How to drive traffic to your website.  Information Today. Retrieved August 1, 2009 from http://www.infotoday.com/mls/nov08/Schmidt_Houghton-Jan.shtml.

Stover, J. (2007). What’s marketing got to do with it?. Webjunction. Retrieved August 1, 2009 from http://www.webjunction.org/marketing/articles/content/444514?_OCLC_ARTICLE%20%20%20%20S_getContentFromWJ=true.

I’m glad to see that the New York Public Library is continuing their collaboration with artists and crafters after their popular Design By the Book series with Design*sponge.  This time they are partnering up with with Maura Madden, author of Crafternoon: A Guide to Getting Artsy and Craftsy with Your Friends All Year Long, to bring Crafternoons to the Public Library.  Anyone lucky enough to live near the NYPL should check them out.

It appears that librarians are posting “day in a life” time lines on their blogs this week.  I read the first couple with mild interest, but as more and more have appeared, I find myself increasingly intrigued.  As a non-practicing librarian, it is nice to know what a typical day entails.  Here are a few I have enjoyed thus far:

Meredith Farkas

Jessamyn West

Michelle McLean

David Lee King, pt. 1

David Lee King, pt. 2

And even more (plus photos and video):

PBwiki

Technorati

Flickr

And only because it is also art related….

I have been noticing more and more fantastic book art on blogs and in the art world lately.   Here are a couple of my favorites:

Thomas Allen--Maneater, 2006

Sue Blackwell--A Quiet American

Sue Blackwell--Birds in the Open Forest

I certainly understand the desire by some school systems to substitute e-readers for textbooks. The devices can hold multiple books, some offer the ability to search within a book, etc. But how much money will they really save? Children batter and bruise textbooks daily–can the e-readers stand up to this abuse? It seems the cost to replace broken devices could override any cost benefits that come with replacing textbooks. Finally, if students are not accessing these textbooks via e-reader, but rather via the Internet, what about children that do have ready access to a computer? Isn’t this hurting lower-income students? Some school systems that use e-books have the teacher project the e-book on the screen during class. The teacher then prints handouts for children to take home with them. Is this saving money? Is that really being environmentally friendly?

But aside from the school issue, the biggest problem I have with e-books is the fact that their content is licensed. The problem with this was exemplified last week when the book, 1984, was simply, quickly, and easily deleted from the world’s Kindles. Apparently, the copies of 1984 being sold on Amazon were unauthorized and violated US copyright law (though the book is in the public domain in Canada and some other nations). Amazon did refund each of its customers for the purchase, but seemed to leave most customers feeling somewhat violated. Yet another reason to not stock my digital bookshelf with e-books.  Although I am not usually a proponent of treating digital items the same way as physical items, when it comes to licensing, I feel that both libraries and the public are at risk of loosing some of the rights previously given to us by the first sale doctrine. Libraries, of course, have been dealing with this for a long time. The general public seems to be just waking up to the notion.

As you can see, my thoughts are still quite muddy concerning e-books. While the rest of the world is shouting that the time of the e-book is now, I prefer to wait awhile.

I saw this on the DCPL Labs website and had to repost because I loved it that much.  The Johnson County Library in Kansas has covered their delivery trucks with these gorgeous and funny advertisements referencing classic books found in the library.  According to this article in the Kansas City Star, the ad agency involved with the project (Barkley Advertising Agency–which offered its services free of charge) wanted to “curtail the ‘traditional’ and ‘conservative’ perceptions some have of the library.”  I feel they have done a great job of it!