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To provide background on annual Banned Books Week's event that promotes intellectual freedom issues in the USA.

Historical and philosophical overview, including current celebration activities.

This year the American Library Association was notified of 547 challenges, up from 459 last year. Three of the ten most challenged books were cited for homosexual themes, the highest in a decade. Most of the books featured during Banned Books Week were challenged, but not actually banned. This is due to the efforts of librarians, teachers and booksellers to maintain them in collections.

Banned Books Week draws attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society.

This chapter focuses on book bans in an American context via embedded power relations and overlapping cultural and political spheres. In particular, it examines how those who face the biggest impact, namely, public high school students, navigate their marginalized position as minors, to challenge the structures of authority represented by their parents and school administration. This chapter demonstrates the importance of personal identity claims, social networks, and the power of knowledge of one’s First Amendment rights, as mobilizing forces for students to demand social change. Case studies of protest by students to overturn book bans are examined. The purpose is to understand the effect of state prohibitions on education that strengthen a student’s symbolic power as a force in society, and in some cases, fosters resistance through community-level activism.

Purpose – Public debates about censorship laws largely focus on their desirability and the limits set on free speech. From a historical perspective, however, the logic and contradictions inherent in these laws’ implementation, as well as their evasion, also merit attention. This chapter places at the heart of its investigation the General Communist Notification (1932) in British India which prohibited specific kinds of Communist publications from import and circulation, even more so in a context of mass anti-colonial nationalism. Methodology/Approach – Using government and intelligence agencies’ archival records, intercepted documents of the Communist Party of India, legislative debates and memoirs, this chapter illustrates the censorship of Communist literature in India at two levels: one, it sketches a broad picture of the mode and extent of the censorship of Communist literature in late colonial India (c. 1925–1947). Two, by excavating debates and processes around the treatment to be accorded to books of two British Communist writers, John Strachey and R. P. Dutt, it reveals the constraints and dilemmas of censorship of Communist literature. While doing so, it brings both Indian and British voices to the fore. Findings – This investigation provides valuable insights into the operation of laws related to specific genres of publications, provides an assessment of the success of censorship measures, and highlights the repercussions of their failure. Originality/Value – By illustrating the limited success of censorship measures, as well as the dilemmas of censors and debates among them, this chapter urges for a more nuanced and multidimensional understanding of the operation of censorship, particularly in politically fraught contexts.

Without knowledge of prison censorship restrictions and its impact on collection development, public and academic libraries may find initiating and continuing collaborative projects with prisons challenging. This chapter provides a background on the American Library Association’s correctional-facility guidelines, an introduction to prison censorship restrictions and collection policies, an introduction to what specific challenges collaborators may encounter, and a flowchart to show how to navigate such challenges.

This chapter compares the status of intellectual freedom in libraries “then” (1970s) and “now” (2005). As starting points for comparisons, it uses two Advances in Librarianship chapters, by Edwin Castagna (Castagna, 1971) and David K. Berninghausen (Berninghausen, 1979), respectively. The US Supreme Court, although somewhat ducking the direct question of library censorship in a school library case in 1982, has consistently upheld intellectual freedom, even in the face of an onslaught of federal laws passed by Congress to restrict speech. The high-water mark came in 1997 when the American Library Association joined the American Civil Liberties Union and others to challenge the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which would have prohibited “indecent” speech on the Internet, an undefined term that could have swept away vast quantities of speech. In 2003, however, the Supreme Court ruled against libraries when it held that a narrower law, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is constitutional. This law requires libraries and schools that receive specified federal funds and discounts to use “technology protection measures” to block obscenity, child pornography, and material “harmful to minors.” This chapter looks at these and related cases, as well as the library profession's evolving ethical and political stance on intellectual freedom issues.

A lack of access to information due to censorship still exists in today’s society, one example being within our prison facilities. In 2018, Big House Books (BHB), a nonprofit organization that sends free books by request to prisoners in Mississippi correctional facilities, filed a lawsuit against the Mississippi Department of Corrections and the South Mississippi Correctional Institution located near Leakesville, Mississippi, when the institution started returning books to BHB and requesting they only send religious books instead. Later that same year, the Human Rights Defense Center, a nonprofit organization working for criminal justice reform, filed a suit on behalf of prisoners of the Forrest County Jail located in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, stating that all books and periodicals other than the Bible and occasionally other Christian publications had been banned from the facility.

The current study is an in-depth case study of these two cases of censorship in southern Mississippi correctional facilities. Through a series of qualitative interviews with individuals connected to the cases, the study seeks to better understand the current phenomenon of censorship in prisons. Participants included prison employees, lawyers, and others involved in the two cases. Whether it be through services such as an actual library or information center provided by the prison facility, or the facility allowing books and other materials to be sent to inmates, incarcerated individuals have the right to access information. This study seeks to enlighten and act as a catalyst for change regarding censorship that is occurring within prisons today.

For more than 200 years, intellectual freedom has been a constitutional right of US citizens and the world’s oldest democracy. Librarians in particular have helped to protect this important right by ensuring that all citizens have access to whatever information they need. In her introductory article, Hannelore B. Rader enumerates the many examples of people in other countries who have not had or do not have access to all types of information. A good example is the former German Democratic Republic and the Berlin Wall. There are also examples in the USA where groups of people or individuals have tried and still try to censor information and to limit access to information. In the present electronic environment, intellectual freedom has become an even more complex issue by allowing individuals a forum to easily state their opinions, whether truth or propaganda. Librarians are experiencing a growth in “banned books” and controversies surrounding filtering software in public libraries. However, the ultimate question remains: should intellectual freedom be restricted? Contains an extensive bibliography of intellectual freedom resources compiled and annotated by Terri L. Holtze.

Public schools should be educational havens free of religious affiliation. Students and educators are encouraged to think critically, racial injustices and institutional bigotry promote civic understanding and participation, and value diversity of thought and experience. Unfortunately, and especially in the past three years, Nebraska public schools have endured a spate of racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic incidents. Some districts have banned children’s books about racial injustice. Others have failed to diversify their curriculum to include LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) representation or have asked their teachers not to mention “controversial” topics such as immigration. These responses have exacerbated the problem rather than mitigating it, which has harmed marginalized students, families, educators, teacher educators, and librarians in the area. Teacher educators work hard to train teacher candidates and future librarians to advocate for their students and their communities. However, when they become teachers and librarians in our local schools, this work is blocked, and they face traumatic consequences that cause them to burn out and leave the profession early. This is especially true of our Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) teacher candidates, librarians, and teachers. This chapter will describe how educational leaders have failed in their leadership and how some BIPOC teacher educators advocated publicly and got into “good trouble” for themselves and their students who teach in their communities. Teacher educators should not stay in the ivory tower; they have a responsibility to be public intellectuals who have an active role in the community where students teach to model what they teach students to do.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

The paper introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

The findings provide information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.