Education Commons^™

Questioning The Dogma Of Banned Books Week, Elliott Kuecker

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This article examines the dogmatic celebration of Banned Books Week in libraries in the United States through Foucault's notion of the speaker's benefit and the repressive hypothesis. Given that the books featured during Banned Books Week are not legally banned, but actually widely available, it appears this celebration does more for the identity of the field of librarianship than it does to fight censorship.

We’Ve Come A Long Way (Baby)! Or Have We? Evolving Intellectual Freedom Issues In The Us And Florida, L. Bryan Cooper, A.D. Beman-Cavallaro

Works of the FIU Libraries

This paper analyzes a shifting landscape of intellectual freedom (IF) in and outside Florida for children, adolescents, teens and adults. National ideals stand in tension with local and state developments, as new threats are visible in historical, legal, and technological context. Examples include doctrinal shifts, legislative bills, electronic surveillance and recent attempts to censor books, classroom texts, and reading lists.

Privacy rights for minors in Florida are increasingly unstable. New assertions of parental rights are part of a larger conservative animus. Proponents of IF can identify a lessening of ideals and standards that began after doctrinal fruition in the 1960s …