The FTRF Blog - Freedom to Read Foundation

The FTRF Blog

Read the latest news about FTRF and the First Amendment in Libraries and engage with thoughtful opinions from leaders in our community on The FTRF Blog.

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Banned Websites Awareness Day is today!

Posted By Jonathan M. Kelley, Wednesday, October 3, 2012

As mentioned in a previous post, the Freedom to Read Foundation is a national promotional partner of Banned Websites Awareness Day, sponsored by AASL. The issue of filtering in schools and libraries is a contentious one, and several cases have been - or are in the process of being - litigated in the courts. FTRF will continue to be involved in the issue of filters, which continue to prevent access to important information.

Resources

AASL has a good list of resources to learn more about how filtering affects teachers' and librarians' ability to educate and provide resources to students (and themselves!)

FTRF general counsel Theresa Chmara issued this July 2012 memorandum on filtering, discussing some of the most recent legal cases and their implications for schools and libraries

KQED put together a number of excellent resources on "What To Do If Your School Bans a Useful Website"

AASL member Michelle Luhtala presented a webinar last month at edWeb.net - the recording is freely available - and also recorded this radio interview

Tags: AASL Banned Books Week Banned Websites Awareness Day BWAD filtering

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Krug Awards III

Posted By Admin, Tuesday, October 2, 2012

The final four of our 2012 Krug Fund grant recipients for Banned Books Week 2012 programming. Amazing.

RFK REK Library

The Robert E. Kennedy Library at California Polytechnic State University was a 2012 Krug Fund grant recipient for a banned author talk, Read-Out, and wall-sized Infographic featuring the most frequently challenged books of the last decade, among other events. http://lib.calpoly.edu/books/banned/

Lawrence (Kan) Public Library

Lawrence (Kan.) Public Library was awarded a 2012 Krug Fund grant for "Banned Books Week Trading Cards,” a daily giveaway of baseball-like cards depicting the artwork and "statistics” of various banned and challenged books. Other events sponsored by the library will be a Read-Out, photo booth, panel discussion of local writers and attorneys with experience dealing with book challenges and "Cozy up to a Banned Book,” an interactive installation wherein patrons can sit in a recliner and read various library books. http://www.lawrence.com/news/2012/sep/30/collect-em-all/

St. Catharine College

St. Catharine College (Ky.) received a 2012 Krug Fund grant for a cook-out, chalk drawings and their fifth annual, three-day-long Banned Books Week Read-Out. They also will sponsor an essay contest for local high school students. http://www.sccky.edu/

Simon Sanchez High School

The final 2012 BBW feature is Simon Sanchez High School (Guam), for Read-Outs, posters and a "Roadside Wave,” featuring celebratory boards and signs. This will be the first commemoration of Banned Books Week for the school, based in Yigo on the northernmost part of Guam. In 2000, the school library was decimated by a typhoon, and to date, not all of the resources have been replaced. This is the first Judith Krug Fund grant for an organization in a U.S. territory. http://www.simonsanchez.org/

Tags: Banned Books Week

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FTRF supports Banned Websites Awareness Day

Posted By Jonathan M. Kelley, Tuesday, September 25, 2012

BWAD badge We are pleased to announce that the Freedom to Read Foundation is a national promotional partner of AASL's Banned Websites Awareness Day. Now in its second year, Banned Websites Awareness Day was created to raise awareness of the overly restrictive blocking of legitimate, educational websites and academically useful social networking tools in schools and school libraries. Check out the press release here.

Banned Websites Awareness Day will take place on Wednesday, October 3, 2012.

Among the activities for BWAD is a free webinar, "How to be a Ninja Warrior Filter Fighter!" Presented by Gwynyth Jones, this session will focus on how overly restrictive filtering affects student learning and what school librarians can do to fight restrictive filtering in their schools.

The webinar, which will take place at 7:00 p.m. EDT (4:00 Pacific) is open to both AASL members and non-members.

Another national partner for BWAD, the ACLU, has a lot of resources available via its "Don't Filter Me" project, inspired by the discovery that many school library filters were blocking pro-LGBT material. FTRF's general counsel Theresa Chmara addressed this issue and others in her July 2012 memorandum on filtering.

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