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A librarian in Boston told me my banned books display was all wrong and she was right
I set up a small banned books display at my local library branch in Boston last summer with about 15 titles, mostly the famous ones everyone already knows. The head librarian pulled me aside and said the display was actually hurting the point because it made censorship look like ancient history instead of something happening right now. She told me to swap out half the classics for books challenged in the last 3 years, including several I had never heard of. I rebuilt the whole thing with a little card next to each book showing the year and place it was challenged, and checkout numbers tripled. Does anyone have a good source for tracking recent challenges so I can keep the display fresh?
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knight.diana17d ago
Ha, meanwhile my first attempt at a banned books display was so old I think I put the Canterbury Tales on it and called it a day. The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom keeps a challenge tracking page that stays pretty current, that's where I'd start.
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