Banned Books Week 2009

December 4, 2009

Jo Roussey, director of volunteer services at York County (Pa.) Libraries’ Martin branch, sets up a display of the top 10 books most frequently challenged or requested to be removed from libraries last year.
Jo Roussey, director of volunteer services at York County (Pa.) Libraries’ Martin branch, sets up a display of the top 10 books most frequently challenged or requested to be removed from libraries last year.

Banned Books Week 2009 gave libraries, librarians, and library patrons across the U.S. an opportunity to speak out against censorship and demonstrate the meaning of free speech. Events were held around the country in places as varied as Texas, Illinois, Virginia, and Florida, where displays exhibited challenged books, concerts supported the reading of banned books, and t-shirts proclaimed a need for free expression.

The concept of intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even  if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. The event was founded by Judith Krug, director of OIF for over 40 years and an outspoken opponent of censorship.

Banned Books Week, observed since 1982, is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the First Amendment. As an initiative of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.  The event is held during the last week of September, and it highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship.

Banned Books Week is also recognized internationally. Amnesty International uses the event to direct attention to individuals who are persecuted because of the writings that they produce, circulate, or read. Amnesty International’s website highlights the cases of writers, journalists and documentarians who have risked their lives in the attempt to uphold civil liberties.

This display at Virginia Beach (Va.) Public Library’s Meyera E. Oberndorf Central Library is the handiwork of librarian Beth Larmour.
One of the official ALA OIF Banned Books Week posters and chains adorn a book display at Arlington (Va.) Public Library’s Central Library.
Librarian Penelope Houston (left) from the San Francisco Public Library, known for her work as frontwoman of the punk rock band the Avengers, and her partner, SFPL employee Patricio Johnson, perform a song during a lunchtime music-themed Ban(ne)d Books reading and performance at the Main Library.
Author Lauren Myracle talks to the crowd during Banned Books Week’s national “Read Out!” kickoff in Chicago hosted by ALA’s OIF, the McCormick Freedom Museum, and Newberry Library.
Authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson sign copies of their book And Tango Makes Three at the national kick-off of the “Read Out!” event in Chicago.
A burlap bag and chain cover banned books at the University of Arizona University Libraries in Tucson in conjunction with events hosted by the School of Information Resources and Library Science’s student-led Progressive Librarians Guild.
Brown paper with burned-in peep holes surrounds a bookcase at Robinson Memorial Library in Cleveland, Mississipi. The paper surrounds 22 banned or challenged books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.
Two official ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. Banned Books Week posters are on display at Lake Villa (Ill.) District Library.
A Loudoun County (Va.) Public Library staff member shows off a T-shirt that declares FREADOM on the front, courtesy of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, and an excerpt from Nikki Giovanni’s poem Good Books in conjunction with a BBW United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit, “Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings.”
Jessica Herr, head of circulation at Pass Christian (Miss.) Public Library, models bookmarks celebrating the freedom to read in front of a display symbolically cordoned off with a chain and padlock.
A Banned Books Week table is prominently displayed at Madison County Library District in Rexburg, Idaho.
Jo Roussey, director of volunteer services at York County (Pa.) Libraries’ Martin branch, sets up a display of the top 10 books most frequently challenged or requested to be removed from libraries.

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