Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations (IDIC)

From September 1 to October 31, 2012, Armacost Library is holding an Intellectual Freedom Blogathon featuring posts on topics concerning censorship, the freedom to read, view, and express, and the connection these various freedoms have to individual life experiences and the state of society. The following essay is part of the Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) Blogathon.

By now there have been many blog posts on intellectual freedom and I will not need to reiterate the definitions that have been said. For me intellectual freedom is not in essence about banning books or censorship; those are important aspects but not the essence. For me intellectual freedom is about intellectual diversity and the fitness of a society. A society that has a diverse set of intellects is a more fit society. This society can grow and produce progeny for many years. It can do this because the society contains a plethora of intellects which are able to fill future niches and address many different issues. Thus a society that has intellectual diversity is a society that is most capable to survive and adapt when there is a drastic change in the environment.  

image from WikiMedia Commons

It is here that I would like to bring in my favorite show, Star Trek. In the show the Vulcans have a saying, “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” (IDIC). This saying is one of the key aspects of Vulcan philosophy and acknowledges the many variables in the universe. IDIC recognizes that the sheer complexity of the universe is something unquantifiable, yet it can be conceptualized. The universe is so vast with so many ‘things’ in it, it has reached the point of infinite.

IDIC can be broken down quite easily into its two parts and related to intellectual freedom. The first part, Infinite Diversity, relates to the source material. This material can be: books, movies, games, technology, paintings, papers, or any other ‘thing’ made. To reach infinite diversity we must have a vast array of diverse materials uncensored and produced free of intrusive meddling. The true artist’s intended material must be produced. Every edit performed to fit a rating system or to conform to societal morals reduces the diversity of material. Taking away the restraints of editing censorship will increase the amount of source material to the infinite.

Infinite Combinations is related to the distribution and availability of the material. To have these combinations the material must be available to reach other minds. In this manner the distribution cannot be censored or hindered. A store refusing to sell a book because of its subject matter is an equal hindrance to a publisher editing out the same questionable content. One cannot know how a work created will affect a person or a population. One person could see the material and combine it with their personal history or other materials they have read in a synergetic manner to create something new and world changing. When distribution is censored the possibilities of these infinite combinations reduce. 

When materials are both free of editing and distribution censorship we reach the possibility of IDIC. A society that embraces IDIC will then reach a point where the intellectual diversity of the society reaches infinite. As this diversity reaches infinite the society’s fitness will also reach infinite.

Refresher information on IDIC was retrieved from Memory Alpha, one of the leading Star Trek wikis.

Iyan Sandri, Class of 2008
Computer Lab Coordinator
Information Technology Services, University of Redlands
Author of To the Victors, (c) 2010

Fanning the Embers of Knowledge

From September 1 to October 31, 2012, Armacost Library is holding an Intellectual Freedom Blogathon featuring posts on topics concerning censorship, the freedom to read, view, and express, and the connection these various freedoms have to individual life experiences and the state of society. The following essay is part of the Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) Blogathon. 

All libraries do the first aspect of facilitation, providing access.... Where too many libraries fall short is in how they: see knowledge as a thing, overemphasize access, and support consuming knowledge instead of creating it. If our libraries are going to support our communities in the future, they must do a better job across the spectrum. 

~ R. David Lankes, 2012, Expect More: Demanding Better Libraries for Today's Complex World, p. 43

Lately I've been asking myself why I chose to be an academic librarian. This navel-gazing is not just because my faculty review dossier, including a reflective evaluation piece, is due in a few weeks. I've been asking myself this question mostly because I have been feeling a little...lost in the dark. I entered library school thinking that what I was studying to become, the profession I was seeking to be a part of, made a difference in the world. I still hold this opinion. Well, I cling to it. The daily tasks of emailing, organizing, meeting, reviewing, and scheduling have made me lose sight of what drew me to academic librarianship in the first place.

Finding my professional path

While thinking about my professional purpose as an academic librarian, I settled on Armacost Library's own organizational vision statement. Simply, it affirms intellectual freedom as our reason for being, our collective purpose, our heartfire. Intellectual freedom, in brief, encompasses two parts -- the freedom to access others' ideas and the freedom to express one's own. Both are important and rely greatly on the other. The freedom to access and to express, germane elements of intellectual freedom, are necessary conditions in a world where knowledge is dynamic, powerful, and constructed in the hearts and minds of people.

Thinking about the active nature of knowledge presents big challenges. Questions abound. If reading about some things only provides initial steps toward learning, how do we go further, especially with our shelves and shelves of printed books? Our continuous searching for and licensing of more, increasingly expensive, databases and digital content? How can we nurture active learning spaces, feed the carefully tended intellectual flames throughout the University community? These are some questions we are currently grappling with at Armacost Library in order to better facilitate knowledge creation within our communities.

Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) Blogathon is a small spark of light. It does not offer comprehensive answers or assume final solutions. But it does open up a part of our library online space for wider conversation.

How can Armacost Library inflame the embers of your knowledge creation?

Melissa Cardenas-Dow
Outreach/Behavioral Sciences Librarian
Armacost Library, University of Redlands
melissa_cardenasdow (a) redlands (dot) edu
909.748.8089

Introducing our new librarian

Sally Romero

Armacost Library is very pleased to have Sally Romero, Visiting Reference/Instruction Librarian, join us. Please give her a warm Redlands welcome!

Below are some introductory words from Sally:

Sally Romero comes to the University of Redlands after nearly nine years in public libraries.  Her previous position was with the County of Los Angeles Public Library where she started since her junior year in high school.  While working full-time for the County of Los Angeles Public Library she also worked as an Adjunct Faculty Librarian for Chaffey College.  Born and raised in Southern California and unable to cut the umbilical cord from her family, she attended and graduated from California State University, Fullerton in 2008 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications with an emphasis in Advertising.  Sally graduated with her Master’s in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University in 2011.  However, she never set foot on the San Jose State campus until commencement day. 

Fun facts: Sally admits that while working in Children Services for public libraries she loved to run ongoing Pajama Storytimes so she could wear her pajamas at work.  While growing up, Sally’s grandmother spoke both Spanish and Mayan to her (Sally thought it was purely Spanish).  To this day, Sally confuses certain Mayan words for Spanish.  She loves to visit her parents' hometown in the Yucatan Peninsula and she never gets tired of visiting the pyramids and exploring different cenotes (groundwater caves).

Banned in Arizona, Available at Armacost

From September 1 to October 31, 2012, Armacost Library is holding an Intellectual Freedom Blogathon featuring posts on topics concerning censorship, the freedom to read, view, and express, and the connection these various freedoms have to individual life experiences and the state of society. The following essay is part of the Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) Blogathon.


Inspired by Les Canterbury's post "Books Removed From Classrooms," I wanted to visually see the many  books that have been removed statewide from Arizona classrooms and curriculum. According to a March 2012 New York Times article, seven titles were "ordered removed from all classrooms" yet additional titles "fell into a category of books that could no longer be taught but could be used by students for leisure reading." Does this mean they're banned? Yes, according to the American Library Association which states that any book that has been removed "based upon the objections of a person or group" is a banned book. The following is a list of books (provided by Elaine Romero*) banned in Arizona and available at the Armacost Library.

* Oddly, Ms. Romero did not include "Chicano!" by Francisco Arturo Rosales in her list which was named as one of the seven titles removed from classrooms by Michael Winerip and Stephanie Siek. I've since added it to this list.

Paige Mann
Physical Sciences Librarian
Armacost Library, University of Redlands
paige_mann (a) redlands (dot) edu
909.748.8088

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to campus! We at the Armacost Library hope you had a good and full summer. As for us, things have been a stirrin'! For example,

• Have you used our new website? As our student body, technology, and culture change so must our website, and wow was our website in need of change! As the intellectual center of campus, we hope these changes support your work as academics, and that you find our website easier to use and navigate. Let us know what you think.
• Check out our new lounge area! That's right, we've rearranged and refurbished the East side of the 2nd floor near the women's restroom. Make yourselves comfortable in our new sunlit space.
• We've consolidated our help desks. Quick quiz:  How many help desks did we staff last year? (View the answer at the bottom of this post.) Now, you needn't bother trying to figure out which desk to go to, just stop by our central help desk at the entrance of the library.
• Librarians restructured the way we work with our academic peers. Until recently, librarians worked with different department regardless of disciplinary similarities. This year, librarians are responsible for working with academic areas more closely related to one another. For example,this year I'll work with the Physical Sciences (Mathematics, Computer Science, Geographic Information Science, Physics and Astonomy). See My Librarian to find the librarian responsible for your area.
• Course Reserves are now green. Thanks to course reserves extraordinaire, Denise Cline, the library take a more environmentally savvy approach, cutting down on paper usage and saving trees in the process.
• We hired a new Visiting Librarian, Sally Romero, to fill in for Shana Higgins (who's away on sabbatical). Please join us in welcoming Sally and stay tuned to learn more about our newest team member.

Answer to the quick quiz:  Last year Armacost Library had four help desks:  the Door Monitor desk (the kiosk you see upon entering the library, now closed), the Circulation desk (now renamed the Help Desk), the Periodicals desk (located to your right upon entering, now closed), the Reference desk (located to your left upon entering, now closed).

Books Removed From Classrooms

Only in AZ

From September 1 to October 31, 2012, Armacost Library is holding an Intellectual Freedom Blogathon featuring posts on topics concerning censorship, the freedom to read, view, and express, and the connection these various freedoms have to individual life experiences and the state of society. The following essay is part of the Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) Blogathon. 

My beloved home state of Arizona has done it again.  Must be something in the (lack of) water.  Books have been removed from classrooms (in front of students during class time, allegedly) and are gathering dust in a school district warehouse.  What message does this send?

A long-time state legislator, who became Superintendent of Public Instruction and is now Attorney General, got a bee in his bonnet over some comments made by labor leader Dolores Huerta to a Tucson high school class several years ago, allegedly.  He proceeded to draft, and lead to enactment, legislation that is now codified into Arizona law.  Under that statute, referred to by some as the anti-ethnic studies law, he ordered Tucson to immediately shut down their very successful Mexican American Studies (MAS) program - success measured in significantly higher graduation rates among Mexican American program participants compared to the overall Mexican American student population.  The Tucson school board then voted 4-1 to dismantle the MAS curriculum, ordering school officials to stop teaching MAS classes and to remove MAS program books from classroom shelves.  A few of the removed books (with Armacost Library call numbers):

Thoreau, Henry David. Civil Disobedience. PS3048 .A1 1970

Rodriguez, Luis J. Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. HV6439.U7 L77 1993

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. LB880.F73 P4313 2006

Alexie, Sherman. Ten Little Indians. PS3551.L35774 T46 2003

Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek. PS3553.I78 W66 1991

Díaz, Junot. Drown. PS3554.I259 D76 1997

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. PR2833.A2 H6 1955

Baca, Jimmy Santiago. Black Mesa Poems. PS3552.A254 B54 1989

Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. PQ7298.15.S638 C8613 1995

Gonzales, Rodolfo “Corky”. Message to Aztlan. PS3557.O47 M4 2001

Hooks, Bell. Feminism is for Everybody. HQ1190 .H67 2000

Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. LC4091 .K69 1992

Valdez, Luis. Zoot Suit and Other Plays. PS3572.A387 Z6 1992

Some of these titles obviously found themselves on the wrong shelves at the wrong time.  Banning Shakespeare?  Are you kidding me?!  At the same time, plenty of the books present challenging material.  They present alternative viewpoints.  They contain ideas that require readers to use (develop) critical thinking skills.  They are exactly the kind of material that students should be reading.  If the book banners do not want students engaging with this material, they have chosen a tactic that is bound to fail.  By removing these books from the classroom, they have created greater interest in them within the student body and the public.  These titles are readily available via many libraries and booksellers.  We have most of them at the Armacost Library.

Adelita Grijalva was the lone dissenting board member in the 4-1 vote to stop the MAS program.  She, and others, spoke at the American Library Association Annual Conference in June 2012.  Another of the speakers was Tony Diaz, aka El Librotraficante (the Book Smuggler).  His website has interesting information on efforts to fight the book ban.  Many other people are trying to return books to students.  News of their efforts, and much more information, can be found online, of course, by Googling or searching for actual news articles via databases such as LexisNexis.


Les Canterbury, Collection Development/Reference/Natural Sciences Librarian, Armacost Library

Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) Blogathon Participation Guidelines

Intellectual Freedom can be a thorny topic. While controversy can provoke deeper, more critical thought, it can also turn people away from engaging in the necessary conversation that the controversial topic raises. Because of this we have devised some simple guidelines for engagement during the Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) Blogathon. These apply to posts and comments alike.

1) Please use civil and respectful language.
2) Opinions expressed in comments and posts belong to their author.
3) There may be times and situations when posts and comments will not be posted at all or will have to be removed. Comments that advertise or sell products, for instance, are not appropriate. Threats of violence, veiled or actual, against persons or groups of people are also unacceptable. Armacost Library faculty are responsible for moderation tasks.

Armacost Library values our collective freedom to read, view, and express. We also value our shared responsibility to maintain and uphold such freedoms.

Melissa Cardenas-Dow 
Outreach/Behavioral Sciences Librarian
Armacost Library, University of Redlands
melissa_cardenasdow (a) redlands (dot) edu
909.748.8089