Friday, February 2nd, Robert and I visited with our college librarian and archivist, Kelly Brown in her office in Nash Library. Mx. Brown met with us for about twenty minutes and gave us advice regrading our particular library and resources around Oklahoma. Mx. Brown has been at Nash Library since 2002 and has a bias … Continue reading Meeting People #1 : Librarian
Author: corbin (Page 2 of 2)
Interview Kelly Brown – Librarian at Nash Library Robert BlueBack and Max Corbin 0:00 Max – Do you know of any kinds of book challenges in this district or…? Kelly – I can only speak to challenges to books here at Nash and we haven’t had any since I’ve been here which has … Continue reading Interview #1 : Kelly Brown
This is my StoryMapJS map. Feel free to read through and explore how I have come to this point through books.
Book censorship seems to be more common than I originally thought, though it has been difficult to gauge as the cases for Oklahoma seem to be fewer than I would have anticipated. Reasons for censorship are wildly different from one another. I had not imagined before this that a book could be successfully challenged for profanity or inclusion of the LGBT community. As someone involved in the LGBT community, I find the erasure of information available to students to be disturbing at the least. While the youngest students may not necessarily need access to the information provided in books such as I am Jazz, older students who are trying to flourish with their identities may be hindered without the information ready.
Robert and I have decided to investigate further into instances of The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien being banned. We chose this book as we are both enthusiasts of high fantasy adventures and did not anticipate these books being challenged for the reasons we discovered. Tolkien was a Catholic and the series has been challenged for being anti-religious despite the various analogies present in the work. This caused us to take a dive into the work to discover where these books are removed and if it is only from curriculum or if libraries are having them removed from shelves.
I personally seem to be having issues finding specific individual cases of bans, finding instead lists of commonalities or the ever-popular Banned Book Week read projects. I did find one string of challenges in researching books for us to choose from involving Edmond Public Schools and Kite Runner. From 2014 to 2017 there have been challenges about the book being used in a sophomore level class. While I adore this book, I do have to agree that the graphic content could be a little much for sophomores to stomach, especially with the various parental circumstances surrounding students. A few selections from the book could cause mental upset if not properly discussed and parents may not be willing to discuss the contents of this book with their children.
Thankfully, WordPress is relatively familiar to me. The limitations placed for the purposes of this course threw me off initially. I could not edit and place an image for my blog and when Robert found he could not either I decided to leave the program be. I am glad to see the tasks such as categorization are still available as I enjoy organization of my technological assets.
Finally, I worked with StoryMap JS this weekend. It was a little strange as I had not used it before, however the demo during class proved to be the most beneficial information I received. I now feel more comfortable with this tool. I attempted to highlight on my favorite books through some important points in my life.
I feel confident going into this week and hope to schedule an appointment with the librarian for early on to gain insight to our college’s literary and research variety.