[Libs-Or] Tuesday Topic: Intellectual freedom beach reads!

[Ross Betzer]

Welcome to another installment in a monthly series covering topics with
intellectual freedom implications for libraries of all types.  Each message
is prepared by a member of OLA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee.  Look for
our message on a Tuesday each month of the academic year except December.
Questions can be directed to the IF Committee member who sent the message
or to one of the co-chairs of the IFC.


Let’s go to the beach!

Can professional reading be page-turning? Sure it can! Here are 10 books
(novels, nonfiction, and even manga) to take with you on your Summer
vacation, each of them focusing on some aspect of intellectual freedom.
Contents include censorship, mass-surveillance, hackers, copyright - and
all of them will help you start thinking about intellectual freedom issues
in new ways. Be inspired to new heights of militant librarianship for when
you return to the library after your break!


   -

   *Whiskey Tango Foxtrot* by David Shafer (2014, fiction). Conspiracy
   alert! Big business wants to privatize everybody’s information (shocking, I
   know!) so an underground group needs to fight back. Some of the action is
   set in Oregon.



   -

   *The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses* by Kevin
   Birmingham (2014, nonfiction). Writing *Ulysses *was the easy part:
   getting it published almost ruined Joyce.



   -

   *Library Wars: Love & War* by Kiiro Yumi (2010, manga fiction, 13
   volumes and counting). The federal government in this alternate-reality
   Japan has cracked down on “troubling” books. What do the local library
   systems do? They create the Library Forces to fight back! And it’s a
   romance.



   -

   *Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature *by Robert Darnton (2014,
   nonfiction). A thoughtful look at how governments have used censorship to
   shape literature and lives in three different centuries and places:
   18th-century France, British-occupied India, and Communist East Germany.



   -

   *Pirate Cinema* by Cory Doctorow (2012, young-adult fiction). In this
   celebration of remix culture, a group of teenage British hackers rebel
   against the government’s attempts to lock down the Internet. (This would
   pair nicely with Doctorow’s latest book,* Information Doesn’t Want to be
   Free *(2014, nonfiction), which has advice and opinion about DRM,
   copyright, and the Internet.)



   -

   *Banned in Boston: The Watch and Ward Society’s Crusade against Books,
   Burlesque, and the Social Evil *by Neil Miller (2010, nonfiction). A
   witty, insightful (and scandalous) read about how the good intentions for
   protecting social mores can restrict freedom and create a backlash.



   -

   *No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance
   State* by Glenn Greenwald (2014, nonfiction). A fast-paced account of
   the Edward Snowden leaks from the journalist who helped leak them, and a
   persuasive argument for the importance of individual privacy.



   -

   *The Library Juice Press Handbook of Intellectual Freedom: Concepts,
   Cases and Theories*, edited by Mark Alfino and Laura Koltutsky (2014,
   nonfiction). This collection of new, provocative essays will make you think
   differently about what intellectual freedom means and how we might work to
   support it.



   -

   *Intellectual Freedom Manual*, 9th edition, edited by Trina Magi and
   Martin Garnar (2015, nonfiction). Hot off the presses! Get the
   newly-updated edition of the American Library Association's classic
   reference work, and keep it handy as you fight the intellectual freedom
   good-fight at your library. Always meant to read it but never have? Here’s
   your summer project!



   -

   *The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian* by Sherman Alexie
   (2007, young-adult fiction). According to people who don’t want it in the
   library, this young-adult novel is: anti-family, culturally insensitive,
   sexually explicit, violent, and contains drugs, alcohol, smoking, and
   gambling. And it was the United States’ number one most challenged book
   in 2014
   <http://www.ala.org/news/state-americas-libraries-report-2015/issues-and-trends>
   !


You can find all these titles and more on the *OLA Intellectual Freedom
Committee’s Goodreads page*
<https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/39800860-ola-intellectual-freedom?page=1&view=covers>
.

Happy reading, and viva la liberitad intelectual!

-Ross Betzer


Information Services Librarian - Multnomah County Library
Member - Oregon Library Association Intellectual Freedom Committee
rossbk at multcolib.org | 503.988.5728
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