Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed
during the last week of September each year. This year it is from Sept.
23 – 30. Observed since 1982, the annual event reminds Americans
not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.
Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose or the
freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be
considered unorthodox or unpopular. It stresses the importance of
ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints
to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist
only where these two essential conditions are met.
Between 1990 and 2000, of the 6,364 challenges reported to or recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom:
- 1,607 were challenges to “sexually explicit” material (up 161 since 1999)
- 1,427 to material considered to use “offensive language” (up 165 since 1999)
- 1,256 to material considered “unsuited to age group” (up 89 since 1999)
- 842 to material with an “occult theme or promoting the occult or Satanism” (up 69 since 1999)
- 737 to material considered to be “violent” (up 107 since 1999)
- 515 to material with a homosexual theme or “promoting homosexuality” (up 18 since 1999)
- 419 to material “promoting a religious viewpoint” (up 22 since 1999)
- 317 to material involving “nudity” (up 20 since 1999)
- 267 to material involving “racism” (up 22 since 1999)
- 224 to material involving “sex education” (up 7 since 1999)
- 202 to material considered to be “anti-family” (up 9 since 1999)
Links
The Reference Department in Irwin Library now has a flatbed scanner available for your use. It is connected to the lab computers on the end of the row opposite the printers. It is labeled Multimedia Station. This is the same computer that has the CHOICES III database and is on a wheelchair-accessible table.
Instructions for using the scanner are available at the workstation and you are also welcome to ask at the Reference Desk.
The Reference Department now has a public scanner available. It’s connected to the same computer that runs CHOICES III (and is also wheelchair accessible).
The scanner is very easy to use. Just put your document on the glass (in the top right corner like the pictures show), and hit the button in the front of the scanner that shows a picture of the flatbed scanner. When it’s done, it opens the program for you to save the document wherever you like. And that’s it! Of course, there are advanced features, but for a basic scan of a document, that’s all there is.
As you may know, we have expanded our computer lab in the Reference Dept. in Irwin, with a total of 25 computers right in the lab.
Along with these new computers has come a new image for the computers. There is now additional software available on them (like Photoshop) to make them more like the computers in the dorms and other labs on campus. Two other changes have also been made:
- The computers will automatically log off after 20 minutes being idle. This offers plenty of time if a student leaves the computer to go find a book and then come back, but still offers SOME modicum of security if people forget to log off by themselves. The norm in the labs is 15 minutes, but we wanted to make sure they had time if they were writing a paper and needed to go look something up, so we increased it to 20 minutes.
- Internet Explorer is now starting up automatically upon login. The two main programs that students use are MS Word and Internet Explorer. Since there has been some confusion about the extra programs available on the desktop, we are trying having IE start automatically, which will, of course, take them to the Library Website automatically. An informal poll I’ve done says that students use IE for email, my.butler.edu, Blackboard, MySpace, research, and other functions, so most have been glad because it saved them the time of clicking and opening it themselves. As I’ve watched students, when the computer boots up, they automatically click on Internet Explorer anyway. If you are in a position to listen and gather feedback from students about this change, I would welcome that information.
Thanks very much.
Scott
The computer lab in the Reference Department of Irwin Library has finished its reconstruction!
Reference shelving has been moved, new computer tables have been added, new wiring systems have been installed, a new switch has been added to increase our wired network connectivity, and now we’ve added additional computers. That brings the number of lab computers available in the Reference Department up to 25! With an additional three computers on the first floor that are specially designated for groups. And six other computers located throughout the other floors of Irwin Library.
All these computers still print to IL_120_1, which is the pair of printers in the Reference Department.
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