Jul 29, 2009

Competency #8 - Internet

With all this talk about challenged and banned books, I thought for this competency it would be appropriate to discuss Banned Book Week. Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982. September 26 - October 3, 2009, can be one week in time where we can celebrate intellectual freedom.

http://bannedbooksweek.org/

Anyone may Google banned book week for information on how you can get involved in your area.
Photo courtesy of Banned Books Week.

Jul 22, 2009

Competency #7 - Multimedia

Searching for a multimedia component for this blog was not difficult. There are a wide variety of catchy images and graphics out there all relating to challenged or banned books. I suppose the most difficult task was narrowing my choices down to one. I used Graball.com for my search.

I choose a YouTube video that promotes Banned Book Week. The video is humorous, but is also a reminder of our First Amendment rights.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa1aUmjf2ns

Jul 20, 2009

Competency #6 - Retrieval Approaches

This week we will be reviewing four search strategies; Citation Pearl, Browsing, Building Block, and Successive Fractions. We will be using these methods to search for literature discussing the topic of challenged or banned books.

Citation Pearl:

For my Citation Pearl search I used the Project Muse database. I chose an article that covers my topic, challenged and banned books. The article is titled, Banned Books: Forbidden Fruit: the Beginning of the Grapes of Wrath in the Kern County Free Library by Lingo.

If I view the descriptors I see; libraries, censor, censorship, books

Next, I will conduct a new search using my descriptors,
s1 - censorship
s2 - books
= 3,708 results.

This resulted in 3,708 results. I notice an article titled Hidden Forms of Censorship and Their Impact. When I view the descriptors in this article I see 'children's literature' added. I conduct a new search.

s1 - censorship
s2 - books
s3 - children's literature
= 1,548 results.

By repeating this process I can widen my search using synonyms and broader terms. We can narrow articles to library materials or by school. By building on a "pearl", new searches using descriptors allow us to search and find articles that might not have been returned on an initial search.



Browsing:


For the second search we will browse through some articles using JSTOR.
s1 - book*
s2 - ban*
= 49,229 results.

These returns are hard to manage, so I will narrow my search by adding elementary school.

s1 - book*
s2 - ban*
s3 - elementary school
= 3,536 results

Although this helped, there are still too many records to sift through.

s1 - book*
s2 - ban*
s3 - elementary school
Limiters - English, article btwn 2005-2009
=88 results.

Instilling limiters has definately assisted in my search. Browsing is a great way to start a search before you have narrowed down your requirements. This search technique allows the user to discover and learn new information easily.



Building Block:

For the Building Block approach, I choose WorldCat database.
s1 - challenge*
s2 - ban*
s3 - book
s1 + s2 + s3 = 156,783

156,783 documents were returned. Limits need to be employed to limit the amount of unneccessary returns.

Limit - English, article, s1 = challenge* OR censor, and book is the Subject.
These limiters definately helped. We now have 22 documents that met our criteria.

From these results I would be interested in the article Comic Censorship published in 1991.




Successive Fractions:

LibraryLit searches exactly what the title implies; library literature. Considering this, it isn't necessary to limit searches in this regard. A successive fraction search enables the person to limit or broaden a search using Boolean terms. And/Or was employed in this search.


s1 - challenged OR banned
s2 - books
s3 - OR censored


Results seemed manageable from the start. 1,023 articles were returned. Although that is a good start, we can do better.


Limit: Full-text and articles published 2005-2009


With our new terms, we now have 259 results to look over. Browsing through the first two pages of results, I realize I would like to keep the terms and look further. No additional limiters are needed.





It is obvious that not one answer resides in one place. It takes time and the use of different search techniques to find exactly what is needed. Although some searches return almost an unmanageable amount of returns, it is important to utilize every tool available.

Jul 11, 2009

Competency #5 - Tagging

I have been a fan of LibraryThing (librarything.com) for over a year. I can spend hours finding undiscovered books through tags. I searched for "banned books" and noticed a book I haven't read before, 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature by Nicholas J. Karolides. This reference discussed titles that have historically been challenged or banned across the globe.

Here is the tag history:

(1) #(1) $18.95(1) 1-00004(1) 1discovered(1) 888(1) 1999(1) 2000(1) 2007(1) 2008(1) 2008 luetut/read in 2008(1) @phil2(1) aic(1) america(1) american history(1) anthology(1) areopagitica(1) bab(1) banned(2) banned books(12) biblio(2) bks & reading(1) bm(1) book(1) Book History(2) Book Reference(1) books(17) books about books(26) books and reading(4) Books/Libraries/Writing(1) Bought new 2009(1) box_books-2(1) censored(1) censorship(40) Censorship--History(1) Censorship--United States--History--20th Century(1) Censure(1) Challenged books(1) Checked Out(1) classroom shelf(1) collection(1) controversial(1) critical information studies(1) culture(1) denver(1) Edition -- Histoire(1) encyclopedia(1) English(1) fact book(1) facts(1) fiction(1) free speech(1) fu(1) Goodreads Import(1) Have but not yet read(1) Hd(1) historical(1) history(18) History of Reading(1) humanities(1) info(1) Intellectual Freedom(4) karolides(1) kieli ja kirjallisuus/linguistics & literature(1) kitchen(1) law(1) leisure(1) libertarianism(1) librarianship(2) libraries(2) Library History(1) lis(1) lists(2) Lit. Studies(1) literary criticism(4) Literary History(1) literary reference(1) literary theory(1) literature(22) Literature Information(1) lr(1) lt-inspired(1) may(1) Meridian:Free Expression(1) Need to Read(1) new zealand(1) nf(1) no google(1) non-fiction(32) Non-Fiction: Textbook(1) On My Reading List(1) Other social problems & services(1) own(2) owned(2) paperback(1) partially read(1) politics(3) Private Collection(1) professional(2) Prohibited books--History(1) Prohibited books--United States--History--20th Century(1) read(3) reading(5) reference(20) reference; banned books(1) religion(2) reviews(1) sc(1) School(1) sex(1) Sexuality(1) Social(1) sociology(1) tbr(1) TBR Nonfiction(1) TBR pile(1) textbook(1) To Read(1) tp(1) trade(1) trade paperback(1) trivia(1) uci(1) unread(3) wave 2(1) wishlist(6) wishlist-found(1) world literature(1) World literature and censorship histories (THE Wall - 5th tier)(1)

As you can see, this title has been tagged "banned books" 12 times. I encourage you to follow the link above to go directly to LibraryThing.
Photo courtesy of LibraryThing.com.

Jul 4, 2009

Competency #4 - RSS Feed - The Banned Book Club

The Banned Book Club is a blog that continues to offer conversations about challenged and banned books. It is moderated frequently and offers membership. They have several interesting discussions all pertaining to the important topic of book censorship. The RSS feed can be found on the upper right hand corner of this page. Blog was located using blogsearch.google.com


http://www.squidoo.com/xml/top_lenses/group/banned-books

Photo courtesy of Banned Book Club.