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

Banned Books Week Turns 30

This year, Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates 30 years of awareness-raising activity focused on the issues of censorship.

Armacost Library is marking this occasion by hosting the 2nd Annual UofR Reads Out during Banned Books Week. More details to come.

Banned Books Week 2012 runs from September 30 until October 6.

We also want to alert the University of Redlands community to the Banned Books Week Virtual Read-Out. Both the BBW Virtual Read-Out and UofR Reads Out celebrate our collective freedom to read, view, and express.

Interested in learning what books have been challenged recently? Check out the Top 10 List of Frequently Challenged Books of the Twenty-First Century. If you're wondering about classic titles, take a look at the list of Banned and Challenged Classics. Both lists are courtesy of the American Library Association.

Armacost Library is also holding our first Intellectual Freedom Blogathon. Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) runs through many fall 2012 events at Armacost Library, such as Constitution Day (September 17), Banned Books Week (September 30-October 6), National Information Literacy Awareness Month (October), and International Open Access Week (October 22-28). We welcome participation from across our University community.

Edit, 10/1/2012: 2nd Annual UofR Reads Out is slated for Wednesday, October 3rd, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Hunsaker Plaza. We hope to see you there!

Introducing the Armacost Library Intellectual Freedom (ALIF) Blogathon

Image courtesy of Melanie Cardenas

From September 1, 2012 to October 31, 2012, Armacost Library will be celebrating the cornerstone concept of Intellectual Freedom. This is our way of  observing a significant theme that runs through many of our events this fall semester: Constitution Day (September 17), Banned Books Week (September 30-October 6), National Information Literacy Awareness Month (October), and International Open Access Week (October 22-28).

We are opening up our weblog space to writers from the University of Redlands community. Students, faculty, staff members, and administrators are welcome to submit posts with the general theme of "intellectual freedom." Comments are also welcome.

What do I send? What do I write about?

Overall, the topic of the post needs to be about matters concerning intellectual freedom, a wide, multi-sided subject. The writer point-of-view can be personal and subjective or academic and objective.

Some guidelines:

• Must meet the overarching topic of intellectual freedom. See the topic suggestions below.
• 200-1000 words, please.
• We prefer prose, but poetry is also welcome. For this campaign, we want to limit things to written words.
• Send along an accompanying emblematic image. Just make sure you send along a caption too. We’ll put up your text and image in the same post.
• Ensure accuracy of your factual assertions. Make references to resources (online or otherwise). If your post has been adapted from a previous work you’ve done, please let us know this too, so we can make note of it on your post.
• Have a title and tags for your post.
• Consider the venue (a blog) and your audience (who’s going to read your post). Blog posts are often written in an informal yet engaging voice, so writing in a conversational way is acceptable. If you’re more comfortable writing with a more academic, technical, or formal style, that will also be acceptable. Structure and grammar help writers convey their thoughts to their readers in a more meaningful way. Please use them!
• Do you want to submit your post anonymously? We can accommodate that. We’ll just say “a UofR student,”  “a UofR administrator,” or whatever is appropriate. Just let us know. If you do want to be identified, please include your major and your class year (i.e., 2012, 2013, 2014, etc.) with your name, if you are a student. If you are a faculty, staff or administration member, please include your department and title with your name. By default, we’ll assume you want to be identified, so please be sure to say if this is not the case.

Some topic ideas:

• Censorship of scientific research results.
• I love <insert banned book, film title here> because….
• A particular instance of censorship or intellectual freedom challenge, current or otherwise.
• I value my freedom to read and view as a <insert role here; i.e., parent, instructor, student, etc.> because….
• Value of reading literature.
• Connection of freedom to read/view with other freedoms (i.e., freedom of speech, freedom to express, freedom to congregate, freedom to demonstrate, etc.).
• Connection of freedoms (see above and below) to matters of equity, social justice, advocacy and diversity.
• This list is not comprehensive.

What do I need to do to participate?

Send a copy of your post to any of Armacost Library’s faculty, following the above guidelines. Email is the best method to send your post submission. Put ALIF in the subject line. This will help us field your submission faster. 

We will contact you about your submission to let you know when it will be posted. Be sure to return to Armacost Library News to see new comments and posts.

How has a particular work of science, literature, film, theater, or art affected you? We welcome your thoughts.

Image courtesy of Melanie Cardenas

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

909.748.8089