National Library Week - There's More to the Story

This year we’re going to party like it’s 1981! That’s because book banning has never been so popular. After Ronald Reagan was elected president we saw the rise of the Moral Majority headed by Jerry Falwell. Book banning, in order to protect children, became a popular pastime of the religious right. As a high school student I found the book banners laughably naïve. What on earth did they think they were protecting us from? 

I kicked off National Library Week a few days early this year by watching Judy Blume Forever, a new documentary available on Amazon Prime, over the weekend. I highly recommend this film for all. Fans will be thrilled with the way eighty-five year-old Blume is honored by young and old, authors, readers, and librarians alike. Those who are not already fans will surely want to find out more by reading some of her books. My almost-sixty-year-old husband has called her a “national treasure” now that he has not only seen the new film, but also listened to her most classic work Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret on audio, and watched her in some Zoom discussions during the pandemic. 

The American Library Association (ALA) declared April 24 as National Right to Read Day, so as a follow-up to the movie the ALA and Prime video sponsored a Zoom event featuring a panel discussion with Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok (directors and producers of Judy Blume Forever); Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada (ALA President); Suzanne Nossel (CEO at PEN America) and Pat R. Scales (author and retired librarian). The panel was moderated by Chris Finan (Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship). Pardo and Wolchok discussed the villainizing of Blume and her books during the 1980s, explaining that they expected it to be a small part of the film, but that they had no idea what was still to come. In one segment of the film we see a clip of Blume on the television show Crossfire with Pat Buchanan. Buchanan, who has clearly not read her books, attacks Blume, repeating the same sentence from her book Deenie. Finan mentioned the segment during the panel discussion, letting audience members who might have been too young to remember Buchanan, that he was a “blockhead from the eighties”. I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Judy Blume shows off some books in her bookstore Books & Books in Key West, FL

One of the panelists mentioned fear as a parental motivation for the sudden rise in book challenges. As I said, even in the eighties the whole thing seemed rather simple-minded, but today when we know that children can find whatever they want on the internet, and as children deal with real issues such as gun violence, abject hunger, and church-sanctioned pedophilia, I can only see this new wave of book banning as a deflection. Parents cannot control what is available online, but they can try to control what books are in their public schools and libraries, no matter how futile it may be.

The theme of this year's Library Week is "There's More to the Story". And, in fact, I have a lot more to say. Listen to me on The Dissident's podcast talking about libraries, library work, and book banning for National Library Week. 

Move Over Meatloaf

What's the anthem of our generation doing on a Library Books blog post? Helping us to introduce a new sex analogy, that's what!

In honor of Read-a-Romance Month my husband of 33 years and I decided to create a new sex metaphor using books and reading rather than baseball. The following literary alternative rejects the popular (hetero) male-centric analogy represented in the music video. It is presented here in a librarian-friendly alphabetical format, rather than a linear setup because sex doesn't always follow a simple path. We may do some things sometimes and not others. Certain acts may be reserved for special circumstances or partners. And we may take a circuitous route, or start and stop and start again before we know it's right. For all these reasons literary analogies have much more to offer than the tired old four-bag sequence of America's second-favorite pastime. 

This list demonstrates anticipation, frustration, excitement, pleasure (and of course climax) among many other emotional states.

Acknowledgements: After the deed is done, thank yous all around.

Author Photo: Profile Picture (which perhaps flatters the subject just a bit) (See also Cover Art).

Book Review: Bragging and exaggerating after the fact.

Bookmark: To be used when the act is interrupted at any stage; we may have a chance to come back to it (or not) once the baby is fed, the phone is answered, or the dog is let out.

Cliff's Notes: Speed dating.

Comfort Read: The one you know will always there waiting to make you feel good (See also Reread).

Cover Art: The dating profile (let's face it, we do judge a book by its cover). (See also Author Photo).

Dedication: To the One I Love.

Epilogue: Was there a call back, a second, third, fourth date? Did they live happily ever after?

First fifty pages: The point at which you can decide to continue or give up (according to the librarian's librarian Nancy Pearl) and remember, if you are over 50 years old you can subtract one page for each year. Also there is really nothing magical about 50 pages. Consent can be revoked at any time.

Footnotes or citations: Giving credit to things you learned elsewhere.

Foreword: Foreplay.

Introduction: First date.

Index: Where was that spot?

Preface: Any of a number of activities that can be undertaken as a prelude to passion. 

Prequel: When you got it right the second time around (See also Sequel or series).

Reread: Falling back on an old favorite (See also Comfort Read).

Second (third, fourth, etc.) editions: After a bit of time we gain some perspective.

Sequels or series: The ones you can't get enough of (and how about all those things we read while we wait for the next installment?) (See also Prequel).

Signed copies: A good memory of a magical encounter - you know you will probably never meet again but you've been provided some masturbation fodder for a long time to come.

Teaser: When you think there is more to come, but sadly discover that it is just a preview of the next novel. 

The End: Finishing - it doesn't count unless all parties involved get there.

Blogger (left) pictured here with Nancy Pearl

What's New About Fake News

Last fall I was on sabbatical. My intention during my time of reflection and scholarship was to research how to teach students to evaluate web resources. However, as the 2016 election season heated up I became concerned, as did many, with the proliferation of fake news and falsehoods being reported (both intentionally and unintentionally) in news sources and social media. And so my research was refocused. Ultimately what I concluded was that people need to read more, and read deeply if they are to become informed, critical thinkers, especially where the news in concerned.

I was excited to learn that the MassHumanities Fall Forum this year would bring together a panel of top-notch journalists to discuss the very topic I have been studying and presenting about during the past year. The panel included documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson; Managing Editor of The Onion Marne Shure; and Claire Wardle, Strategy and Research Director of First Draft. Moderating this impressive group was Pulitzer Prizer winner Sacha Pfeiffer.

Ms. Wardle opened the discussion by admonishing all (panelists and audience members alike) to abolish the use of the term "fake news". She instead identified three different types of information that have been given this moniker:

Misinformation has no bad intent - perhaps something that is mistakenly reported by news media. Once the news source recognizes the mistake they rectify or clarify with the correct information.

Disinformation is deliberate, intentional spreading of news that is not true.

Malinformation is news that while true, or based in fact should not be disseminated. Examples are leaks, and hate speech.

Ms. Shure followed with commentary about satire, which is assuredly not the same as "fake news". Satire intends to train, not trick. Satire is used to help us see a larger truth through the use of humor. She specifically stated that when one of the stories from The Onion starts going viral as a "true" story it means that the writers have failed at their job. I especially liked what she said about Facebook's labeling of "satire" for stories such as those from The Onion. Labeling removes the burden of the "mental labor" required on the part of readers to identify satire themselves. This is not a good thing. Labeling essentially takes away the reader's agency.

I learned some new terms from the panel that helped me to think more deeply about how news is consumed and disseminated:

• Frankenbiting - splicing together of sound bites to make it appear that a person said something they didn't, even though all the words are theirs.
• Strategic Silence - a move on the part of the news media not to mention a fake news story, even with the intention of debunking it. Even when they report it as false, it helps the story to spread.
• Emotional Skepticism - Something that we should all employ before hitting the "share" button (or posting a comment). That which tells us to actually read a news story, and then wait a few minutes before sharing it, rather than simply reading the headline and allowing ourselves to become indignant.
• Arms race on technology - as new technologies are applied to programs in order to fight malicious information, we can be sure something else will be created in order to combat those. When we allow technology to make decisions for us how long is it before the technology is hijaked? Again, this conclusion mirrors one that I came to myself when I did some research for a presentation I gave at the Tafila Technical University in Jordon this summer. Technology is a tool, but it is not the end answer, (there is never just one answer)! Fresh concerns over consumers' agency arise. Most of us (myself included) do not understand the algorithms being used to tell us what to read. When we let other people, and machines, decide what we see we give up control. 

Once upon a time we all consumed the same news. Everyone in the neighborhood got the same paper, and watched the news from the same three networks on television. Now, each person can choose what they see, and what they don't see. This makes for a challenging way to run a democracy.

A special thanks to David Leonard, President of the Boston Public Library for the "shout out" to librarians at the end of the program!

More information about the forum and the panelists can be found here.  My husband's insights on the program can be found on his Environmental Geography blog.

On Marginalia, or, Why I Don't Write in my Books

While cleaning up my office, and computer this summer in preparation for my sabbatical I found a forgotten file that appeared to be an essay I started in response to this editorial about marginalia from the Bridgewater Review. It seemed rather late to finish it to submit to the magazine, but the ideas in it seemed appropriate for a blog post, so I've adapted the response for publication here.

While we all have been taught that marking up library books is wrong, might we not question that dictum? If you have something relevant to add to what the author is saying, why not share it? As a librarian I respect the argument, but still insist that library books be returned in the same condition that they were loaned.

But what about writing in our own books? Certainly people can do what they like with their own property, including defacing it, as long as it doesn't hurt someone else. And we might even argue that we should write in our books. We might want to refer back to an idea that was sparked while reading, and notes can help us remember those. Additionally, any of us could become another Thomas Jefferson, or a Mother Teresa. Won't our marginalia then be valuable to historians? However, for myself, I will say that if, in time, anyone should ever go looking through my books for musings they will likely be sorely disappointed. I hung up my hi-liter in college, and while I probably made some notes in some of my graduate school textbooks too, I have since been careful not to. I think perhaps what made me stop writing in books all together may have been the purchase of a used copy of Ashes of Izalco by Claribel Alegria and Darwin J. Flakoll from a college bookstore. It was not-so-meaningfully marked up by a previous reader (mostly with a yellow hi-liter), and it was also signed by both authors, something I did not realize when I bought it. I read the book for a class, and honestly don't remember it but still it sits on my special shelf reserved for autographed copies of books. And I really hate that this one has been defaced.

I read a lot of books, and I often blog about them. I use scraps of paper or post-it notes to mark things that I want to return to later. Generally, once I've published my blog post about a particular book I pull all my markings out. Of course, if I've read a library copy this is simply common courtesy to my colleagues who will have to do the work of removing the markers if I don't, but even when I use a personal copy of a book I still take the time to remove any physical evidence that I actually read it. I firmly believe that each reader needs to make up his or her own mind about the meaning of a text, and they don't need someone else's ideas mucking that up. Since I usually pass a book along to someone else once I've read it, the next reader will have a fresh start. (I do, however, make an exception to this rule for cookbooks when I make adjustments that improve the recipe as written. This, of course, will only help the next user, as Harry Potter learned in The Half-Blood Prince!).

I recommend that readers who wish to engage with authors do so directly by writing to them (if they are living). The letter writer is very likely to be rewarded with a response directly from the author. I also occasionally find that an author has commented on one of my blog posts, truly a treat! Of course one cannot communicate directly with a deceased author, and so one must be content with corresponding with scholars, editors, or other fans. All of this can be done online, and so comments will reach a wider audience than those written in a single copy of a book, to be read only by those who happen to pick up the same one.

As an end note, I will concede that sometimes marginalia can have worth, as illustrated in this story of a library book made more valuable when the annotations were discovered.

It also looks like it is time for me to re-read Ashes of Izalco.

Even the cover of my copy is "enhanced" with yellow hi-liter

Autographs inside