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For this Blog Post 4, I will be surveying the available technology and additional resources on my campus. I started by finding out where to access the tools I need to succeed, good old Google came in handy to unlock the secrets of St. Mary’s Media Center.

The Media Center at St. Mary’s College of Maryland provides St. Mary’s students, faculty and staff access to the facilities, hardware, software, equipment, and expertise necessary to realize their vision for media intensive projects. The Media Center staff are available to

• Teach students, faculty, and staff how to use media software and equipment to support their creative media projects.
• Provide multimedia classroom support to St. Mary’s faculty.
• Assist with media-related responsibilities at on-campus events.

The Media Center is located on the 3rd floor of the Library.

Noticing that the Media Center is on the 3rd floor of the Campus Library, I thought my best move would be to go check it out for myself. Last week I went into the Media Center to meet with Justin Foreman, I wasn’t sure what specifically I needed to know from him, so I asked Justin to show me around the inventory.

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The Media Center was very spacious, the walls were lined with Mac computers for students to edit their video and audio recordings. Within this work space Justin showed me how to work the computers to edit small video clips. I found it interesting how you could replace the audio file on the clip and insert another voice, or input music over the film overall. Justin said that there are plenty of Media Center employees, students and “adults,” that would be able to help me out if I had any questions about how to edit.

After being shown around the main area, he went through the list of equipment that would be excellent for interviewing people involved in my case.  The things that stood out most to me was the: 1) Microphones (vocal, instrument, clip-on & shotgun) 2) Microphone stands (regular, boom, & tabletop). 3) Cameras (digital video & digital still) 4)Audio recorders (analog & digital) These video and audio devices will be the most important tools in conducting an interview with people of interest who are aware of the Song of Solomon case. 

Justin also reviewed the recording platform called Audacity. Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder. Basic features, as listed on their website, including… Record live audio, record computer playback on any Windows Vista or later machine, convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, Edit WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP2, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis sound files. It would also allow me to cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together and change the speed or pitch of a recording.

With all of these new resources that are available to me, I know I will be able to create excellent audio and video recordings. I would like to thank St. Mary’s College Media Center, Justin Foreman, and Coplac digital learning for the opportunity.

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I met with the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Research Librarian on January 31st. The meeting was extremely influential in helping me to get my research started. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I was always looking for the right answer. After taking a minute to stop looking for the right answer, and just look at everything available, I know now more than before what this research phase means.

The research that I do now is the foundation for the success of this final project. The St. Mary’s Librarian started off with many of the sources that I had already known were available to me, but one thing that she said seemed to stick out the most. She referenced an old newspaper that was from the area. Could this paper have covered The Song of Solomon? That question began to burn in my mind, so off I went to research and find this paper, searching for the title of my book, but came up empty. Maybe change how or what I am searching for? Censorship, maybe that would do the trick? Still nothing, after continuing the search and expanding the terms I decided it would be best to move away from this source.

The Librarian also gave us another newspaper, called the Enterprise. I started off the search and was amazed at how much there was. There was a wave of primary source information that I needed to sift through. Source after source I was more and more involved and convinced that The Song of Solomon was going to be the most controversial book ever written in the United States. I saw how the people of St. Mary’s county reacted to this, but how did other people not in the county react? My next step will be to research how much of a stir this book caused in other places in the country.

Now that I have a good foundation of research from the Enterprise, I will need to contact the St. Mary’s library research librarian and see if they know anything that could help expand my view on the book. I also need to check the book out from the school’s library, every time I set a day to pick up the book I forget to search through the catalog and find the book number. Reading the book and trying to think like a parent or school teacher will be a valuable research.

Overall, I believe that I am on a successful path to completing my base research. Once I have completed a search for local primary sources I will expand my research to the greater context of the United States. I hope to accomplish this before the midpoint of the semester so that way I can move into the latter half well prepared to craft my argument about the book. It will take time, dedication, and hard work, but my partner and I can take on anything.

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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This blog post will discuss the reading “Censorship Is” by Nicole Moore, which is an excellent read for all of you internet surfers who want to learn more about the history of censorship. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “censorship”? For me, the word censorship involves an organization, school district, or government which chooses to regulate an individual’s right to free speech. Moore crafts an excellent article in which they immediately highlight some of the changes of censorship over time. Censorship previously resided in a binary model of libertarian versus a protectionist divide, an interpretation of this stance is just how far should censorship be allowed to go in protecting the population from vulgarity, nudity, and racism. Let’s take the idea of censorship and broaden it, after all, it is this “new censorship” that seems to be the one most ready to prompt criticisms. The new form of censorship is fairly new to discussion, it encompasses a larger array of topics that weren’t previously covered, at least in Australia. It is now seen to encompass all forms of regulations of books, newspapers, journals, films, and more, in which a government can interrupt, distort, or even remove the work of the creator to the general audiences. It is through the censorship of books, movies, and so on which turns the issue of censorship into a social subject. Treating censorship as a social issue can also be used to broaden how we view censorship, which can also allow a psychoanalytical gaze into censorship, meaning that there can be implicit and explicit forms of censorship. Focusing on the social issues of censorship, you must first identify who is in control of censorship and who is the target of the censorship. In other words, who is being oppressed by the censor and who is oppressing. This can be individuals or groups of people who participate in this power struggle, one example of censorship comes from the book “James and the Giant Peach” (1961). The centerpiece of the book was its exact reason for its attempt at being censored in areas, the book could have taught children and students to act out against authority figures and get into shenanigans. In this instance the children and readers of the book would be the oppressed, while school boards and parents the oppressors. It is interesting to see how the role can be played out in something as simple as a children’s book. Another point Moore makes is the use of language and symbolic power, in this case it was described by Bourdieu originally, but still inferring that language as an object cannot be a closed system. Closing off language to individuals produces negative communication, which offsets hierarchies of power that are hard to map in the social world. Putting this into simplest terms, if you regulate the use of certain words you can ultimately undermine an individuals worth. It is these kinds of power struggles that convey the meaning of censorship to a wider audience, and Moore does an excellent job at exposing the oppression in censorship over time.

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