Curriculum Control

Before I entered library school I got a BA of Art History with a minor in history.  But that is not where my love of history began.  In the study of history we learn where we have been so that we might not repeat every mistake.  As my father always quoted, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it."  I took that to heart as a child and in high school had several amazing history teachers who continued to emphasize this view of history.

So, you can imagine my horror when I read this YALSA blog about the Texas Education Board's new conservatively bent history curriculum.  If any other state did this it would be disappointing and outrageous, but Texas wields economic power to decide the textbook publishing for the whole country.

This has been a problem for many years now and has lead to history texts for 11th grade to be at a lower and lower reading level.  Reading level, however, is a small issue compared to skewing the take on history.  I understand that I am a liberal in my views, but I believe that I can sort out facts well enough when they are presented to say that a decidedly conservative bent to history text books in not good for the accurate portrayal of our nation's past.  There are those who say that it is unpatriotic to teach American history in a way that is not flattering to our current political climate or government, but I will repeat my father's words, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it."  If we cannot learn to live with our past and learn from it, then we will continue to repeat our mistakes.

I will also point out briefly that it is a sign of a totalitarian regime when history is censored.  Stalin did it as did many others.  Perhaps I would not be so quick to judge if I had never learned such things in history classes, but I don't think it is the depictions of our enemies that are being changed in this curriculum.  I can think freely and critically about other countries but am asked to put on blinders about my own.  This is not "fair" or "balanced" nor is the vitriolic right wing media campaign that has encouraged such repugnant behavior out of the Texas Education Board.

I encourage everyone to find out how textbooks are chosen by your state or local education board and encourage them to fight for solid, accurate texts that reflect the best scholarship available not a personal viewpoint.

Oregon "Celebrate the Freedom to Read" won the IFRT ProQuest/SIRS State and Regional Intellectual Freedom Award in 2009

Many of my posts have been about challenges and things that we can't do.  I feel like that gets to be unhelpfully negative after a while.  So, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize an initiative in my home state for its work to raise awareness of censorship in our communities.  

It is awards like this one that try to point out what we're doing right and what we should strive toward.  They give me hope that the work I do is not in vain and that there is national recognition of the important work to stem censorship.  Working for a positive goal helps me to keep my motivation up when I feel like I have to fight so hard against those who accept censorship as a legitimate tool.  Often these are people who want to protect their own children or society so it becomes difficult to be the "bad guy" in the situation.  Learning to respond respectively to objections helps, but it is always nice to know that there are larger organizations that agree with the IF principles I espouse.

I included a link to the press release about Oregon's winning program as well as information about the award itself.  I also want to give kudos to ProQuest for funding this award and state IF awards around the country.

Press release
IFRT ProQuest/SIRS State and Regional Intellectual Freedom Award

Catcher in the Rye vs MySpace

Is there really any difference?

One was created by an adult and published through the accepted publishing architecture while the other is a place where anyone can add almost any content anonymously or not with no editors or filters other than other users.  One is text, the other is video, ads, blogs, music, flashing pictures and more.

They both capture teen angst and the thoughts of a young generation.  They both have many adult opponents and proponents.  Both are free expression of what it is to be young and American in their time.  Both foster the creative writing dreams of a generation.

Yet, ask a librarian if you should remove Catcher in the Rye from the YA section and they will turn to you horrified.  How could you suggest we ban a book or otherwise censor our precious books!  Ask the same librarian why they have just restricted access to MySpace on the teen computers and the answer is very different.  Something more like, "To protect them from potentially sharing too much personal information" or "The bandwidth cost is too much for the demand."

These arguments would never hold up with books.  Too much demand for a best seller? Buy 200 copies.  Potentially dangerous information? That's censorship and you can't do it.

Why do we treat new technologies so very differently from old ones?  Because we don't get it.  Kids need social outlets be they online, over the phone or in person.  They will use whatever technology they can to make communication easier and more convenient.  In many ways the server logs and other information available under a warrant make online communication all that much more safe than any other conversation that a teen might have with peers or adults in public places.

Librarian as educator

I've been thinking a lot lately about how librarians can encourage intellectual freedom when there are somewhat reasonable arguments against it.  This comes up particularly with Internet access and safety issues where children are concerned.  Laws like CIPA and others that have stood up better or worse to court scrutiny aim mainly to create better safety for children even though they do so by restricting access.

The best way I can think of to do that is to make sure that we are educating the public (both parents and kids) about how to be safe on the Internet and what are actual dangers versus hype.  This excites me because I started on the path towards librarianship so that I could teach.  I never wanted to tech high school or college and never really had an interest in wrangling younger kids everyday, what I wanted was to teach new things everyday to different kinds of people.  General computer literacy and safety skills fit perfectly into this.

I see librarianship as essentially a super educator extravaganza (with lots of directing people to the restroom) most days.  Sometimes we teach classes and sometimes we just open access to previously unknown resources.

Group presentation

My group focused on Teens and Technology in Public Libraries.  Since many of my entries cover similar issues I thought it would be nice to have it here.

Presentation

Thanks for reading and watching.

Effect of CIPA on teens access in public libraries

As I gear up to address teens and tech in public libraries for a group assignment I thought I would look at CIPA (Child Internet Protection Act) and reflect on how it effects teens access to Internet resources.

From the FCC website

What CIPA Requires

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  Schools and libraries subject to CIPA may not receive the discounts offered by the E-rate program unless they certify that they have an Internet safety policy that includes technology protection measures. The protection measures must block or filter Internet access to pictures that are: (a) obscene, (b) child pornography, or (c) harmful to minors (for computers that are accessed by minors). Before adopting this Internet safety policy, schools and libraries must provide reasonable notice and hold at least one public hearing or meeting to address the proposal.
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  Schools subject to CIPA are required to adopt and enforce a policy to monitor online activities of minors.
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  Schools and libraries subject to CIPA are required to adopt and implement an Internet safety policy addressing: (a) access by minors to inappropriate matter on the Internet; (b) the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms, and other forms of direct electronic communications; (c) unauthorized access, including so-called “hacking,” and other unlawful activities by minors online; (d) unauthorized disclosure, use, and dissemination of personal information regarding minors; and (e) measures restricting minors’ access to materials harmful to them.

Schools and libraries are required to certify that they have their safety policies and technology in place before receiving E-rate funding.

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  CIPA does not affect E-rate funding for schools and libraries receiving discounts only for telecommunications, such as telephone service.
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  An authorized person may disable the blocking or filtering measure during any use by an adult to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purposes.
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  CIPA does not require the tracking of Internet use by minors or adults.

From this description of what CIPA requires I think the third bullet has the most impact on the restrictions that libraries will put on teen access.  Particularly part "(b) the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms, and other forms of direct electronic communications"  This could include social networking sites, which may lead parents or librarians to restrict those sites in the interest of "safety and security".

My own experience has been that the "safety and security" rationale can lead otherwise strong supporters of IF to blink and restrict access.  Teens in particular are vulnerable to this because the younger generation has a much lower threshold for privacy than most adults.  Teens will share information and stories publicly that adults consider private information.  From the adult perspective this is a dangerous situation in which predators can learn enough about a teen to become a real life threat.

While I understand that there are predators and there is a certain amount of caution that is justified I tend to err on the side of free access rather than restricted access.  By blocking teen use of social networking sites in libraries we place those who cannot afford a computer in their home at a further disadvantage in the growing world of online social interactions.  The dangers on social networking sites do not outweigh their considerable and growing usefulness as a place to connect with people from all over the country and world.  I would advocate attempts to educate parents and teens about the possible dangers from identity thieves and other predators rather than blocking use of popular social networking sites.

Another key point is that while CIPA is a set of requirements that must be met for certain funding aid, it is not a legal requirement and any library that was willing to forgo the aid could disregard the rules.  This may be unlikely because public institutions rarely have enough money, let alone extra to cover a new gap.  However, this loophole is one that I keep in mind so that if future restrictions become tighter than my professional ethics will support I have a possible protest action.

Courtesy is not weakness

As a librarian and public servant it is my job to serve my customers courteously and considerately no matter what my personal opinion is of the matter at hand.  This is particularly true of challenges to library materials where my belief in intellectual freedom stands in stark contrast to any challenge.  However, I find that my willingness to help someone (my customer or just a random person) is greatly influenced by their courtesy to me.  As I research the teen lit challenge in West Bend, WI I noticed a pattern of the challengers either playing the victim or being hostile to the library board and others.  This is a tactic I've seen in other customer service situations which confuses me greatly because there is no faster way to ensure that I will be unhelpful than to play politics of victimization or become hostile toward me.

I  witnessed this again, but in a slightly different context, in the divide between Liberal and Conservative.  I found a podcast of a conservative talk radio host (Mark Belling) on Ginny Maziarka's blog in which he railed against the weakness of liberals and their inability to fight terrorism because they care too much for the integrity of the justice system.  Somehow having ideals and an unwillingness to subject innocent people to torture makes me weak.  The fact that torturing guilty people does not yield good intelligence means we're not doing it hard enough not that people are resistant to force.

Granted, I have seen many a public official (usually elected) roll over at the slightest bullying, but for the rest of us, what makes someone think that being a bully will get them their way?  I will not be bullied.  I will fight bullies wherever I find them, be that the school yard or the corner store, the city council or congress.  Bullies get their way only when others allow it and do not expect to find resistance.  Resist bullying, make our world a more civilized and tolerant place by refusing to allow vitriol and spite to break your courtesy while refusing the demands it makes.

YA Books Challenged in West Bend, Wisconsin

While investigating challenges to books in public libraries I came across a set of challenges to teen books in a Wisconsin public library.  There are actually two separate challenges here, one that draws a lot of attention and one that is much more likely to succeed.

The challenge that has drawn attention from bloggers, the ALA, CNN and others is from a group called the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU).  They are challenging the book Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block and asking for it to be banned as well as turned over to the group for public burning or other destruction.  The CCLU is also asking for $120,000 dollars in damages for harm to the complainants for exposure to the book in a library display.  This is a deeply disturbing challenge for anyone who supports open access to information, but it has little legal justification and this is not the first stunt suit that the primary lawyer (Robert C. Braun) has put forward.

The challenge that is more insidious is the challenge immediately preceding, and unrelated to, the Baby Be-Bop challenge.  In this case a concerned mother of four, Ginny Maziarka, and her husband have challenged several teen titles for sexually explicit content and positive depictions of being gay.  She does not want the books outright banned, instead to be labeled as sexually explicit and placed in a restricted area for which anyone under 18 must get parental permission.  She has been blogging and set up a community organization that is trying to further these goals.

The board of the West Bend Community Memorial Library (WBCML) unanimously rejected the requested censorship in June of 2009 and promptly lost 4 members of the board when the City Council refused to renew their terms because of this issue.  The four replacement members are thought to be more friendly to the challenge.  However, WBCML was still awarded the Wisconsin ProQuest Intellectual Freedom Award for its work in protecting the IF of West Bend citizens.

In many ways it is the CCLU challenge that may eventually lead to the downfall of Maziarka's challenges because it is the request to burn books that is catching bloggers' and national media attention.  It is, in fact, the shocking bit of the story that made this particular banning stand out more that others throughout the country.

Here are some links to sources on this issue:
ALA Article
Alan Colmes Liberaland
Right Wing Watch blogg on both challenges
Right Wing Watch radio interview of Robert C Braun
Daily News article
Examiner.com article
Journal Sentinal article
CNN
National Coalition Against Censorship blog
2009 Wisconsin ProQuest Intellectual Freedom Award - West Bend Public Library
Ginny Maziarka's blog WISSUP (Wisconsin Speaks Up)

Censorship in Schools

I fear that I tend to focus on the challenges to IF because I find them the most interesting and disturbing.  This week I came accross an incidence of the Merriam-Webster dictionary being banned in the fourth and fifth grades of a Southern California school district.  This disturbs me on many levels, particularly that the reason for the censorship was hat the dictionary contain a definition for "oral sex".  So now the school is not only censoring a very basic and ubiquitous resources, it is also doing so solely on the basis of a term that students might come across due to curiosity or accident.  In addition the comments of the parents and officials were disturbing in their willingness to censor a resource as useful as the dictionary.

The other reason that this story bothers me is that I didn't hear about it through the American media, it was picked up by the Guardian in the UK and then by Cory Doctorow.  I really think that our society would be less eager to censor ourselves if there was more coverage about the effects on education and access that censorship has.

Please read the original stories, I hope you laugh as much as I did to keep from crying.

Here is a link to the Cory Doctorow piece on BoingBoing.

Public Records and Copyright

Can Oregon copyright the Oregon Revised Statutes?

This is an older issue that came up in 2008, however, this course has put into perspective for me.  The essential function of a library is to provide access to information, open and unfettered access whenever possible.  For this reason I find the issue of open access to state statutes to be both interesting and vital to understanding how we can balance accuracy with open access.

The basics of this particular disagreement are this: Oregon Legislative Counsel sent out cease and desist letters to Justia and public.resource.org telling them to take down their republished versions of the ORS or to pay a licensing fee (Justia reported this to be $30,000 for 2 years).  The letter asserted copyright to the "...arrangement and subject-matter compilation of Oregon statutory law, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables the index and annotations and such other incidents as are work product of the Committee in the compilation and publication of Oregon law."  The organizations who were sent this letter objected and eventually the state decided to not enforce their copyright assertion.

My understanding of copyright and public records lead me to think the copyright claim was entirely bogus, but this was from a sense that if "ignorance is no excuse" then there has to be free access to the laws.  I understand that there may be more to the ORS than just the legal text, but it is all part of the interpretations of the law and how they will be enforced.  I did not, however, have much to back me up other than one course covering some copyright law as it pertains to libraries.

I then stumbled on the Harvard Law blog Info/Law, which addressed the legal presidents for copyright not applying to government laws and regulations.  I was pleased to find several of the cases that I had studied in my own coursework such as Feist, but was shocked by how recent some of these cases were (e.g. Veeck).  I recommend that anyone who is not familiar with the ideas behind limiting copyright of governmental documents take a look at the post because it is very simple and concise.

So, in all this, have I answered my question?  I have for myself and I think the OLC answered it for Oregon and it is a resound "No".  Laws are public record and not subject to copyright lest the people be subject to rules of which they have no knowledge or ability to gain knowledge.

I looked at several bogs for information on this subject:
Justia's initial report of the C&D letter
Info/Law blog on the whole issue of law copyright
Oregon legal librarian's take

Authoritarianism and IF: China's interactions with US internet search companies

With Google's announcement that it may leave China, there has been a spotlight on China's interactions with Internet search services such as Yahoo and Google over the last few years.  In my investigation of the issues I discovered a timeline of privacy invasion incidents, censorship and other events in China's history with the Internet put together by the BBC.  The thing that I found most disturbing was that Yahoo! had been involved in investigations and arrests of several bloggers for the opinions that they shared through Yahoo! services.

I'm not surprised by the censorship of political views by the Chinese government because historically that is how authoritarian governments maintain their power.  Control of political information and opposition viewpoints is a key component to controlling a population and appears anytime a government feels threatened by outside or inside forces.  The thing about China is that it is not the Communist paradigm that is challenged by dissenting opinions it is mostly the current implementation of that paradigm that has significant opposition.  One piece of the current system in China is control over expression which may have once served to control anti-communist rhetoric, but which now controls mostly anti-government and populist opinions.

For example, a skilled tech worker in China will be paid more than most other Chinese workers and encouraged to live in a larger house separated from the rest of the city.  This means that the educated population is not in regular contact with poorer people and has no populist legitimacy.  Many of these same tech workers would prefer to be on a level pay scale with all other Chinese people and are the kind of people who might challenge the current government.  Should one of these people take it upon himself to redistribute the wealth that they earn from working with a western company and live like their neighbors, the government will encourage and threaten until he removes himself from society again.  This means that the most educated and free thinking citizens lack leadership legitimacy and no matter how much they believe in the principles of Communism they cannot challenge the current implementation of it.

This is all to say that China's attempts to control the information access of its population have nothing to do with the particular economic system that they use and more to do with the authoritarianism of the current political structure.  Given this structure, the Chinese government will continue to use any resources they can muster to control the intellectual freedom of its population.  This is not unlike the censorship during McCarthyism or warrantless wiretaps that Bush performed but does raise red flags for the general state of human rights and freedoms in China.

As long as companies such as Google and Yahoo! continue to do business with China according to the invasive and restrictive policies that the government has put into place China will be able to control their population with some international legitimacy.  While it is true that the government run search engine already holds most of the market, the simple protest that Google is finally making may help to encourage better behavior on the part of the Chinese government in the interest of broader commercial power.