Ban A Good Book Lately?

The last week in September is the one set aside by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the Association of American Publishers to draw attention to the issue of of book censorship through Banned Books Week. The DACC library has set up a display to raise awareness of the issue in the hallway in Clock Tower. The display shows copies of each of the 10 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2009 as well as focusing on an especially current hot topic: book burning.

Burning books is the ultimate method of attempting to control history and controversial or opposing ideas -- literally scorching them from the face of the earth. When asked about people who burn books, we in the United States typically think of the Nazis and the great public bonfires of books they held prior to World War II (as documented in this University of Arizona Library online display). But book burning has happened on many occasions since then as well. Some of the more famous, or infamous, incidents are detailed in the article from the CBC.

People in the United States often like to think that we don't engage in such things, but actually there have been several popularly supported book burnings in U.S. history. The one with arguably the farthest reaching consequences was crusade against and mass burnings of comic books in 1948. The attack on comic books as degenerate literature virtually destroyed the industry, which had been robust with the success of Superman, horror and crime comics previously. It would be decades before the industry regained any real legitimacy, and it is only with the development of the "graphic novel" that adult readers have begun to recognize the form as an acceptable reading alternative. Another incidents that enjoyed significant support in certain sections of the population were the removal of works identified as "pro-Communist" by Roy Cohn and David Schine, Joseph McCarthy's primary aides, from U.S. State Department libraries. Authors and works swept under this heading included everyone from Dashiell Hammett, the creator of detective Sam Spade, to Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Some librarians went so far as to burn the suspect authors.

So just for fun to celebrate this week, test yourself with Banned and Challenged Books Quiz which asks you to guess whether particular books were merely challenged (the much more common action) or actually banned.

Lots of E-Resources to Explore

After a long hiatus, Library Lines returns to promote the new electronic content that the library has to offer DACC users. Just a reminder: in order to use any of these electronic resources from off-campus, users will need to provide their DACC user ID and password for authentication prior to accessing the database or electronic publication. If you have trouble using these while off campus, please notify the library so we can trace the source of the difficulty.

Users have several new resources available to them this fall. One of the most useful acquisitions for many will be Facts on File's World News Digest. This flagship publication provides DACC users with more than 70 years worth of national and international news, as covered in the print publication of the same name. Combined with Facts' Issues and Controversies databases, World News Digest can provide an extraordinarily rich tool for those working on speeches or hot button issues. In addition to other points of access, users can quickly locate these three databases together under the Quick Speech Topic Information Link on the Find Articles page.

Another new Facts on File database that is available to users is American Women's History Online. This resource gives users the opportunity to explore every aspect of women's experience in the United States, from Native American pre-colonial women's culture to present-day issues of work, politics, family and faith.

Like Facts on File, the ABC-CLIO social studies cluster of databases saw a significant boost in content this fall. Two additional databases make this resource collection even more useful. World at War provides outstanding content related to the history of wars across the range of human history and from around the globe. Analytical essays are combined with primary documents, overviews, and short subject specific essays on events and individuals.

The other new resource in the ABC-CLIO social studies cluster is the American Government database. This tool offers users detailed analysis of the workings of the U.S. government as well as thoughtful essays in a section entitled Idea Exchange that connect the larger context of the government's structure to current and enduring issues. Briefer sections addressing general topics of state and municipal government are also included.

Fans of EbscoHost will also notice a change in the database lineup. After some calculation and discussion with faculty, the American Psychological Association's PsycArticles, which added only 60+ journals to our online selection, and replaced it with PsychBooks, an online eBook collection of the books published by the American Psychological Association and other major publishers. The database contains more than 30,000 chapters from more than 2000 books as well as the APA/Oxford Encyclopedia of Psychology. More than 1500 classic works of psychology are also included in the database.

And finally, of special interest to DACC faculty and staff, a reminder that the Chronicle of Higher Education is now available to them online (with access to the complete archive as well), courtesy of the library.