Author: geron (Page 2 of 2)

Week 4: Update, Progress, and Reflection

February 18, 2018 / geron / 0 Comments

This past week, Karina and I met with a research librarian, Elizabeth Heitsch, at Simpson Library and talked about how to get in touch with people who was a part of the case from late 2016 in Accomack County. She remembers the case when it happened and how it was a big deal, so she already had an idea of what case we were investigating.

We asked her about her experience with censorship and because she works in an academic library she has not had anything challenged. Of course, their are patron complaints, but they never consider taking anything off the shelves. She pointed out that sometimes they have things like soft pornography because it is being used by a professor for academic research, which I found interesting. Usually there are access restrictions on those kinds of items, but the library will still provide and pay for it if being used for an academic purpose. Because it is an academic setting you can get away with a lot more than you could if it were a secondary high school or middle school. She pointed out that most of the time censorship happens because there are children and young adults under the age of eighteen reading the books that come into question.

After our conversation on her experience with censorship we asked how we should contact the school, because I was concerned we were going to be met with some pushback. This case kind of blew up in our area, and I am afraid they will not want to revisit it. Her main

Map of Virginia, Highlighting Accomack County — Accomack County is in red. Taken from Wikimedia Commons

suggestion for us was to send an email to the school librarian because usually they want to help as much as they are allowed. By emailing we could present ourselves as students and get across everything that we want to because usually over the phone it is difficult to convey why we are asking for this information and we tend to forget everything we wanted to talk about. Following our meeting and class on Wednesday, Karina and I composed a message to the contact page we found on the Accomack County Schools page with the template that Max sent us (thank you Max and Robert!). I haven’t received a reply yet, but hopefully I will before the end of Monday. If we don’t hear anything by then we are going to try to find another way to contact the school library.

Newpaper Clipping Discussing the Accomack County's School Policy regarding learning resource complaints. — Clipping from the Chincoteague Beacon on Dec. 22, 2016 discussing the policy on complaints against learning resources. From Newspapers.com

We are looking into trying to contact the parent who complained about the case and we listened to her complaint in the School Board Meeting we found a recording of on the Accomack County School’s webpage. She makes a strong case for why they shouldn’t include To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the high school curriculum. The really interesting part about this case is we are finding that the school did not follow their own policy on how to handle learning resource complaints. It is a little confusing, but they took the books off the shelves and from the classroom when the complaint was made instead of waiting until they made their final decision. As it was, their final decision was to reinstate the two books and by mid-December they were back on the school’s library shelves. I would love it if we could interview the parent or the student, (with the parent’s permission of course), especially since the school decided against removing the books.

This coming week our focus is contacting more people involved in the case and researching the author a bit more. We started this past Wednesday putting our project site together and we are trying to figure out how exactly we want the layout to be. We are also starting to meet on Wednesdays from 12pm-2pm on campus and working on our project together in person. This way, if we get stuck with any digital technology thing we will have that time to get help and to put our site together. With the in person meetings, I think we can accomplish a lot over the next few weeks.

Week 3: Survey of Technology

February 11, 2018 / geron / 0 Comments

As a digital studies minor, I have learned about a ton of tools I can use to create digital content. I think many of them can be used to create content for Karina and I’s website.

At the University of Mary Washington, we are lucky to have so many digital resources at our fingertips. In the last few years, they built a big Convergence Center that provides a lot of digital tools for students to check out, assistance with those tools, and spaces to work. It is almost like a library but a little more digital projects focused. Between this center and the library on campus we have plenty of help for our project.

One of the main digital tools I think we should use for our project is Timeline JS because I

Image of the cover for To Kill a Mockingbird — From Wikipedia

enjoy the way it looks and I think that it will be useful to present the information we find about challenges for To Kill a Mockingbird in our area. We have found two bigger cases involving this title, one from the late 60s and the other just a little over a year ago, so I think by going through a timeline a user of our website will be able to understand the story we find easily. We could also set up a StoryMap to talk about where the book has been banned and what is the thread that ties all of the cases all over the place together.

I have had a lot of experience with WordPress and I want our site to be really easy for people to navigate. I agree with the high contrast colors, like black and white make it easy for people to use. We will probably use pages rather than posts because I think post would be hard for users to dig/scroll through. The theme we have set up right now is Ryu, which has those contrasting colors, so I think it could work well. We might switch it up after we add a little bit of content.

There are so many plugins available through WordPress that I think it will be easy to find ways to embed content such as, audio recordings, images, and other things like Timeline JS. Even if we can’t figure it out on our own, we can go visit the Digital Knowledge Center, here at UMW. The DKC is like a tutoring center for digital tools and all the tutor are knowledgeable in WordPress. I have friends who work there and myself have gone there many times before to get help with digital projects for other classes. This is technology resource I think can be really helpful for any related questions we may come across.

For audio recording I plan to just use my the recorder on my phone and save the file on my computer. The Convergence Center has a nice Vocal Booth and audio/video editing set up downstairs. They have things like Photoshop, Audacity, and other editing software you can use in there. I know that I can also edit video on my Macbook with iMovie and some Audio with Garageband.

Our library has a nice, simple high resolution scanner where I can email scans I make to myself. They also have a whole collection of microfiche and microfilm newspapers that we can also send the snips of we think we could use to our emails. In the Convergence Center there is a Digital Archiving Lab, so if we find something that we really would need a super high resolution picture of we can request to have it digitized. If we find an awesome photo or chart we could create a StoryMap of it with the high resolution image.

These are the tools that I know of so far. As the project progresses, I am excited to look through more plugins and other digital tools we might possibly be able to use. This site is going to be a lot of fun to put together. Now to get back to work!

Week Two and First Visit with Librarian

February 2, 2018 / geron / 0 Comments

Simpson Library

The photo is taken from the Centennial Image Collection in UMW’s Digital Archives.

Karina and I met with UMW’s Simpson Library‘s Archivist this past Wednesday to see what tools she thought we might be able to use for our research. Carolyn Parsons is a former professor of mine (she taught my Archives and Society Class last semester), so she and I already know each other. She is the head of Special Collections and works together with the Digital Resource Librarian, Angie White. They help students find information within the collection, work to preserve the materials, and keep the depository organized. Professor Parsons was showing me how they had a leak in the ceiling of one of depository rooms, so they are also in the middle of getting that fixed and drying out materials that became damaged. Luckily for the most part, they only had a couple things severely damaged and for the most part are able to restore the other items.

We made the appointment with the intention of asking specifics regarding the book Maurice, but unfortunately because we do not have a local case with that particular book we had to rethink right before our meeting. From the local research Karina and I have done, we have found the To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have been banned fairly recently in Accomack, Virginia, so we asked Professor Parsons where we may start in order to find primary resources.

She showed us a few other newspaper resources we could use besides the couple we were shown on class this past Monday. The ones she shared with us were a little more our area and Virginia specific so I think that will be a big help. We also had a long discussion about what other types of resources might be used for such a recent case. Her suggestions were that we look at the school administration pages and find the meeting minutes for the school board meeting that discussed the removal of the books from the school and we look at legal cases. Professor Parsons showed us how to filter through those and find specific types of cases on Nexus Lexius. I think after we have narrowed our research more we can ask her questions again. We might even try to talk to a subject specific research librarian here too and record some of that conversation.

After the meeting, Karina and I began to so some more digging and found an audio recording of the meeting where the books were discussed for this nearby case in Accomack County. I also found that the Hanover County Schools banned To Kill a Mockingbird in the late 1960s while Harper Lee was still alive. When the author heard about the removal of her book and their reasoning was the book was “immoral” she remarked, “Recently I have received echos down this way of the Hanover County School Board’s activities, and what I’ve heard makes me wonder if any of it’s members can read.” I found that story in this article first and I want to do some more specific research of this incident and why the county believed the book was “immoral.”

From here, we are looking into the specific of the Accomack County Public School Case and seeing their reasoning for challenging the book. I am hoping we can get into contact with the school and ask for any information regarding the complaint and so on. Looking forward to seeing where our research will bring us.

Week One: Update and Reflection

January 29, 2018 / geron

The first week of classes is over and I am ready to get to work!

The theme for this class is A Burning Idea and dives into researching the censorship of books. Another UMW student, Karina Schumm, and I are already researching cases in our area and exploring what makes a book “bad.”

We also have decided to look into the book Maurice, by E.M. Forster and to take a historical approach to the censorship and history of the novel. I am currently trying to read the novel itself and work through what ideas in it make it a book which has been challenged.

The next step we need to take is talking to our school’s research librarian or archivist. We made an appointment for this coming week to meet with Carolyn Parsons, the special collections librarian at UMW. I think with her help, we learn a lot of information about how to look into our topic. We need to find sources about banned books in our community and I think the library and Special Collections is going to be one of our biggest resources this upcoming semester.

Our next class tomorrow, we are discussing an essay by Belinda Louie on Politics in Children’s Literature. After reading this essay today, it sparked conversation about what books kids go for and why they pick it up to read. This essay talks about the people who interact with children’s literature such as the authors, teachers, children, parents, administration, the public, and publishing. Each of these categories have different ideas and personal history that gives them all biases of some kind. The most interesting thing I had not considered before reading this particular essay is that children “choose books that are pleasant” and “reject books with concepts they do not understand” (6). In my personal experience, I find this to be really true. The first book I remember disliking was Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, and it was because I did not like the unpleasant scene where the main character has to see the dead pilot’s body floating in the water where they had crashed. It was in fifth grade and we had to read it as a class. I also remember we had to watch the movie together, which I found to be even more unpleasant.

I have been discussing with my roommates and friends all afternoon what was the first book that made them uncomfortable? And usually it is because of something that was frightening to them, they were stressed, or the book that had a sad ending. Children look for books that are going to make them happiest. They want stories with good endings and do not want to have to deal with uncomfortable ideas. I think this is because, at least for me when I was a kid, reading was a form of escape. I could go on an adventure, solve a mystery, or be a princess, and hide away from the ugliness reality often was.

I also think this is why books are probably challenged in schools, because parents want to protect their children from being uncomfortable. I think there is some validity in age appropriate reading materials, but I also think that in order for children to expand beyond their world viewpoint sometimes they have to be a little uncomfortable exploring an unfamiliar concept or different life view point.

I found this article very interesting. I spent a lot of time reading as a child and when thinking back about the books I read, they were happy ones where I did not worry about being uncomfortable. I took a lot of notes to discuss in class tomorrow, but I wanted to share some of my reflection here. I cannot wait to read more and learn different reasons for censorship.

Louie, Belinda. “Politics in Children’s Literature: Colliding Forces to Shape Young Minds.” Ed. Susan S. Lehr. Shattering the Looking Glass: Challenge, Risk, and Controversy in Children’s Literature. Norwood, Mass: Christopher-Gordon, 2008. Print.