Sue Kline and Caroline McKay
Your library provides material that reflects the needs and interests of everyone in the community.
Taken directly from the Canadian Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Statement: “It is the responsibility of libraries to guarantee and facilitate access to all expressions of knowledge and intellectual activity, including those which some elements of society may consider to be unconventional, unpopular or unacceptable. To this end, libraries shall acquire and make available the widest variety of materials”.
Library staff are busy investigating books that have been challenged over the years as we prepare for Freedom to Read Week (Feb. 22 to 28.)
If you take this freedom as a given, someone may try to dictate what they think you should be allowed to read.
A small section of Canadian society have opinions about reading material that they would like to impose upon you.
Those opinions manifest as objections, then progress to challenges. The challenges are real and they come in the form of requests to remove or restrict access to books in public libraries, schools and other public institutions.
Our freedom to choose what we read does not include imposing our choices on others.
If you think these impositions couldn’t happen in this day and age, you only have to visit the public library and look at the large display of books that have been challenged over the years and are still contentious to this day.
For example, the classic novel, Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, published in 1945, has been consistently challenged for many years due to “foul language”.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, published in 1925 was challenged because of references to sex.
Just last year, a parent of a B.C school student demanded that the book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, published in 1999, be banned from the school.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, published in 1960, was challenged over its racial themes. Author Harper Lee has recently published the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird after 55 years. We’re curious to read her new novel, Go Set a Watchman, and wonder if it will live up to public expectations or be as controversial as her first. Visit the library website www.orl.bc.ca with your library card and make a request on this highly anticipated novel today.
Your right to choose whether to read a book or not, is exactly that. Your right. Don’t allow anyone to take that away from you.
Go to www.freedomtoread.ca for more information and a full list of challenged book titles.
Then celebrate your freedom to read this week by stopping by the Summerland branch of the Okanagan Regional Library and checking out some great books.
Sue Kline is the Community Librarian and Caroline McKay is an assistant Community Librarian at the Summerland branch of the Okanagan Regional Library. Both proudly wear their “If it’s worth banning, it’s worth reading” buttons.
