More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
No wonder Banned Books Week isn’t well known – the organizers don’t care
September 29, 2009 | 8:22 pm
|
By Paul Biba
Jessamyn, at librarian.net, has a very depressing listing of all the sites that should be promoting Banned Books Week – but aren’t. Read it and weep:
As usual, I clicked through from the ALA web page to the home pages of all the organizations who are co-sponsors of Banned Books Week. Here’s what I found.
The American Booksellers Association mentions BBW and offers a broken link to more information about it
The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is still offering its handbook from 2007
The American Society for Journalists and Authors appears pretty busy opposing the Google settlement to mention BBW.
The Association of American Publishers mentions that they are gearing up for this event, but not enough to really mention it on their website otherwise.
National Association of College Stores has nothing, as usual
LoC’s Center for the Book has one of the most awesome URLs ever and no mention of Banned Books Week that I can see.
Even ALA’s home page doesn’t mention Banned Books Week except on page six of their slide show where they tell us what we can buy to support it.
|
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
Years ago on Salon (~’97), someone wrote a piece about interning for the organization that compiles the “banned book” numbers. He went to his boss and said he had good news: the number of bannings had gone down from the previous year. His boss told him to re-examine his data, she was sure he could make the number larger than the previous year. And the writers’ main point was that reporters would only read the executive summary instead of looking at the details, so such questionable methodology could be gotten away with. (And not only by this organization, but most think tanks/lobbyists/grass roots orgs/etc.)
Unfortunately, I can no longer find this article to link to, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for dismissing my comment as a smear. But I know that *I* wouldn’t take seriously any figures about currently banned books.