Banned Books Week Celebrated

     Concord University has been participating in a nation-wide celebration to raise awareness to book banning in the United States this week. Banned Books Week brings awareness to the fact that people in the freest nation in the world are still having their access to certain materials limited in a very Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 fashion. Even something as innocent as Webster’s Dictionary isn’t safe from censorship, as was demonstrated in a California community that deemed one of the word definitions inappropriate. 

    “People actually try to tell other people what they can and cannot read. Banned Books Week just draws attention to that, that the American Library Association and librarians everywhere believe that people have the right to choose what they want to read,” explains Marsh Library Director Connie Shumate. 

    “It’s to get [students] to acknowledge that this kind of thing goes on,” agrees Douglas Moore, Marsh Library’s Information Systems Specialist. Moore goes on to explain that libraries are such common targets for censoring materials, because they are the most expansive variety of materials and “we don’t believe in shuttering things from people.” 

Moore is spearheading the preparation behind Banned Books Week.  He created several exhibitions that appeared in the library all week, such as posters with lists of banned materials and an interactive display where students were able to take ‘mug shots’ of themselves. He had created similar displays for a previous Banned Books Week that were so convincing that students believed that the library was actually censoring materials. “For example, last year we had a display of burning books set up on the front desk. We’d sent out a notice in very Orwellian terms about how Big Brother is watching everything you do, whether you like to think for yourself, and that the Thought Police were after you left and right,” explains Moore, , “and people thought we were actually banning books.” 

    Moore says that participating in banned books week and raising awareness of censorship in this nation is important so that students realize not everywhere is as generous with their written materials as Concord University. “There are schools, there are libraries, there are universities even that have objections to certain materials that are being published or that they have access to, and they try to limit that access by banning that book,” says Moore. 

    Shumate is in agreement that banning text for any reason is an atrocity that goes against everything a library should stand for. “Librarians everywhere, be it in an elementary school media teacher, we all subscribe to the Librarians’ Bill of Rights which is that you are free to choose. If you are a parent, you choose for your children what they read so that this doesn’t go on,” says Shumate.

    Moore agrees with that code of conduct and believes that libraries should be the most open, unbiased sources of information, saying “Most libraries are a center for information, a center for being able to get to things. What if that was taken away from you? Where would you go? You wouldn’t have anywhere to go.”

    Both Shumate and Moore acknowledge that it isn’t just written texts that are the victims of challenges. Movies, video games, and television programs are constantly under fire for alleged ‘inappropriate content.’ “Basically, anytime you’ve got free access to something, something is going to be challenged on it. That’s the way it’s always been,” says Moore. He elaborates that the people of this nation still have the power to abolish the practice of book banning, saying “It’s all in the way people fight it or let it go on.”.