Jesse Whitton

Jesse Whitton

Ban it, burn it, bury it….but whatever you do, don’t read these books!

Ban it, burn it, bury it….but whatever you do, don’t read these books!

Each year hundreds of books are challenged. What does the word “challenged” mean? Challenged is defined as a formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. Whether the challenge is based on sexual explicitness, sexuality, racism, religious viewpoints, violence, offensive language, or many other issues, some of the these books are removed from circulation. Last year alone, 326 books were challenged. Perhaps some of your favorite books made this list. (http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics/reasonsbanned)  This year marks the 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week (http://www.bannedbooksweek.org). Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries.  Banned Books … Continued
Money can’t buy ya love…

Money can’t buy ya love…

…but it can buy us reliable resources to make your research more productive and easy (really!) It’s the time of year when invoices for databases and online reference sources fill the inbox so we wanted to share with you some of the “oldies but goodies” renewed for your continuing research pleasure.   Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context Information about current social and political issues includes pro/con essays, topic overviews, primary source documents, biographies of social activists, court-case overviews, statistics, podcasts and images. OV can help you research, analyze and organize a variety of data for research assignments, debates, presentations and more.   Biography and Genealogy Master Index Provides coverage of nearly 5 million contemporary and historical figures from authors to … Continued