The American Library Association (ALA) celebrates Banned Books Week from September 30th to October 6th.  Banned Books Week celebrates its 30th year raising awareness about censorship and intellectual freedom by highlighting each state (including Washington) and its history of intellectual freedom.  ALA has also created a YouTube site that features book lovers reading passages from their favorite banned books.

The Washington State Library celebrates Banned Books Week by informing everyone that many Washington libraries have policies on intellectual freedom, and all should have a collection development policy that guides what books the library will purchase.  In addition, most libraries also have policies and procedures for patrons to voice their complaints regarding materials present in the library’s collection.  These complaints are then normally presented to the library director or library board to determine the appropriateness of the complaint based on the collection development policy.  If you are curious about what your libraries policies are, give them a call or visit their website; libraries freely offer this information to all that ask.

The most commonly banned books may not be items one would normally guess.  Many of them are considered classics, or are books written primarily for children or young adults.  ALA publishes a list every year of the most frequently banned books.  The top ten for 2011 are as follows:

1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
2. The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
3. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
4. My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
6. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
7. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
8. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
9. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
10. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

ALA Banned Books websites:

http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/

http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/bannedbooksweek?fref=ts

I grew up in a library family and love freedom of information. At the end of September I will be sporting my “I Read Banned Books” button and giving out bookmarks of banned books. I speak fanatically about how wonderful it is that anyone can get information about anything if they have a library card. If I hear, “Should that be allowed in the Library?!?!?” I give a little lecture about how the only person who has a right to censor information is that person themselves, and when I see someone in the public library looking at pornography I chuckle and walk away.

That being said I understand that Prison is a different setting entirely and that if the Safety and Security of the Institution is compromised because of a book, how to make a bomb for example, that book should not be available. When I applied for the job I was worried that I would be banning books left and right, no sex, no violence, and no drugs!!! This is not the case. I was happy and surprised to see that the Institutional Library System works hard at deciding what is and isn’t allowed and does not restrict lightly. How to cross-stitch almost anything: Allowed. How to escape from prison: Not Allowed. Concrete Mama: Allowed. Hacking for dummies: Not Allowed. It’s hard to imagine a time when a book could be banned because of an amoral message or because animals were talking and wearing clothes. It is equally hard to justify checking out a book to a prisoner that advocates violence against a specific group of people. However, you should rest easy knowing that Danielle Steel and Jake Logan are on the shelves and ready for action.