Since the beginning of the A Burning Idea course, I have been struggling to open my mind to see the larger picture and goal of the course. The learning curve for the online format has proved to be steeper than I was originally anticipating, but I am now starting to get a better handle on my assignments and a feel for the format of the course. The amount of progress that I have made on the final project seems to be almost nothing at this point. The research that my partner and I have been doing in the area only ever leads to more questions than finding the perfect answer. Researching for censored books in St. Mary’s County has also proved to be more difficult. The only book that I have discovered so far is called Song of Solomon from the 1970’s. This book was challenged based on the content, not due to its biblical references or usage. The content of the book was sexual, but with what little information I have at the moment there could be more than just its sexual content that caused the problem.
The Song of Solomon is an interesting discovery to have been banned in this area however. Not to far away from my college there is a portion of St. Mary’s County called Solomons island. I have also tried to research if the name of Solomons island comes up as having a biblical origin, but I cannot find that bit of information if it is. This novel by Toni Morrison was flagged to be inappropriate by the St. Mary’s County school superintendent, not by parents or teachers. I am hoping that the more effort and time I put into researching this book I will be able to use it as a suitable source to critique. Currently I am relying heavily on this source to be enough to cover without being too much of a challenge. This course has challenged me in my researching capabilities, using several different search engines, databases, and key words all to find this one book. Numerous hours researching to see if any newspapers covered the book being banned, or even if it was known to the public. These kinds of questions are constantly going through my mind, making me think harder about if I am making the right decisions or not in my research.
I feel that research on this topic has been challenging, and will continue to be challenging. I have stumbled along the way a few times already, but I am always ready to get back up and continue with my research. It is hard to know what the right words are to say when inputting them into a search engine. The best option I have seen is to use the generic “censorship” but even that at times broaden out the topics that are coming up through the search. In my research through the SMCM OneSearch, I cannot count the amount of times that I go through and add one word or put things into a quotations and I almost double the amount of sources found.
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