The September Project

Graphic courtesy September Project

Don't worry. This is not an essay on "What I did On My Summer Vacation." The September Project is gearing up for the US Banned Book Week (September 26 - October 3). Check out the information on their site for a map of activities near you.

What they are, in their own words:

The September Project is a grassroots effort to encourage events about freedom in all libraries in all countries during the month of September.

Since September 2004, public, academic, school, government, and special libraries around the world have organized September Project events. These events explore and exercise freedom, justice, democracy, and community and include book displays, community book readings, childrens’ art projects, film screenings, theatrical performances, civic deliberations, voter registrations, gardens, murals, panel discussions, and puppet shows. September Project events are free and open to the public.

In the meantime, the Pelham Public Library's "Banned Book Challenge" wraps up on June 30th. Time to read one last banned or challenged book?

Legal Issues in Libraries

Jessica Merritt shares a column on "25 Important Legal Issues Every Librarian Should Research" at Best Colleges Online, reminding librarians that there are important legal issues to consider. A number of points are relevant to censorship issues, especially in the United States, including the ones below:

• Filters: Many public libraries are under pressure to filter Internet access to patrons. Whether or not you do so can have legal implications for your library.


• Freedom of information: According to the First Amendment, the government is allowed to restrict information in the library. Find out what you can do about it and how you have to comply.


• Children on the Internet: Your library may be held responsible for offensive content accessed using the library’s computers, so it’s important to find out how to protect yourself.


• Hate meetings: Your library’s meeting rooms and computers may be used in order to spread and promote hateful speech and thoughts. Additionally, you may find that hateful literature is requested. Find out how to deal with this issue before it comes up.


• Book removal: Librarians have to be careful about removing books from a library’s collection. You will find that you often do not have unrestricted authority to remove offensive library books from your library.


• Banned books: Many books can be offensive to library patrons and parents of young patrons that visit your library, and books are often challenged by groups and individuals. How you deal with the removal or preservation of a book is important.


• Bulletin boards: Your library’s bulletin boards may be used as a community resource, so it’s important to consider whether or not you’re violating free speech with your bulletin board policy.


• FBI in the library: The FBI can use your library as a resource for investigating the public’s usage of your resources, so it’s important to know how to deal with it. One librarian has come up with a few technically legal signs that you can use to let patrons know they may be monitored.

In any country, it is wise to know what the law is and to be proactive by having good policies in place. Educate your staff to know how to follow through.

Cuba and Freedom to Read

There isn't much to report on concerning Cuba's Freedom to Read from my personal experience there. I did learn that there is a great emphasis on education and literacy. Whether or not that translates into freedom to read or free thinking is best left with Freadom, an organization which stands up for Cuban librarians and others who have been jailed for supporting the freedom to read.

A quick visit to a public library in Havana revealed books in worn condition.

The Cuban International Book Fair is a celebration of literacy and many families take the time to visit. It is definitely a "must do," if in Cuba in February.

Surprising to me was the literacy campaign, which Castro initiated in 1961. It is reported that "eleven months later, 707,212 people had learned to read and had written letters to President Castro to prove it and say thank you." For more information visit a Photo report: Literacy and computer literacy in Cuba.

As a postscript, may I recommend a couple of authors for the "Banned Book Challenge?" Although Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in Columbia, he began to align himself with the Cuban revolution which reflected his Utopian politics. He spent time in Cuba and eventually became a person friend of Fidel Castro.


Ernest Hemmingway lived out his last days in Cuba. Visitors to Cuba will find a museum dedicated to his life and work and numerous drinking establishments that claim that Hemmingway drank there. Take a tour of Old Havana on Hemmingway's trail. He has been honoured by the people of Cuba who regard him as one of their own. Ironically, according to Study World's entry on Ernest Hemmingway, his father was a strict man who censored what his children could read.

Cuba and Freedom to Read

I leave for Cuba in two days. It may be interesting to see what differences there are in our perception of "Freedom to Read." I will be in an academic setting, so I will try to ask questions about censorship and let you know what I have observed. From my understanding, there are librarians, then there are librarians in Cuba. Some adhere to the state's restrictions while others keep private libraries from which they lend prohibited books. For more information on Cuba, visit our friends at Freadom. Included on the site is a list of the top ten books burned in Cuba.

Check out our "Banned Book Challenge."

I Love You, Madame Librarian by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five is now on my "must read" list for the "Banned Book Challenge." I was not that familiar with Vonnegut, other than the fact that he is almost the spitting image of a friend of mine. I am fascinated by what I have read about him and how his life inspired his writing. I like his punchy, satiric style. Check out his writing below.

I Love You, Madame Librarian by Kurt Vonnegut

I, like probably most of you, have seen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Its title is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury’s great science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. This temperature 451° Fahrenheit, is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury’s novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: Our daily sources of news, papers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books can we find out what is really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published near the start of this humiliating, shameful blood-soaked year.

In case you haven’t noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly powerful weaponry and unopposed.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.

With good reason.

In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound and kill ’em and torture ’em and imprison ’em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven’t noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O’Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and the Chicago-based magazine you are reading, In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed that there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn’t even seen World War I. War is now a form of TV entertainment. And what made WWI so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now am tempted to give up on people too. And, as some of you may know, this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? “Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.”

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.

What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?

With thanks to Luminiferous Ether, who is about to become a librarian herself, from whom I cribbed this article about Kurt Vonnegut and admits to shamelessly cribbing it from Michael Moore who shamelessly cribbed it from "In These Times."