The OCPL Board of Trustees and the certified public accounting firm TFG sponsored a Banned Books Week Read-a-Thon on September 27, at the Central Library. Library patrons heard words they may have disagreed with, or even despised when they attended the second annual Banned Books Week Read-a-thon. And that was the point. Community leaders and library employees read from their favorite banned or challenged book to celebrate the freedom to read in America. Each reader chose a book from a list of banned or challenged books drawn from the American Library Association, as well as other sources.

Following the Read-a-thon, library patrons and staff attended a reception in the Library’s Curtin Auditorium. Keynote speaker Bruce Coville, a noted children’s and young adult author from Central New York, presented “Dirty Deeds Done in the Dark: Censorship and Secrecy”. Cathy’s Corner Café catered the reception, and Collin DeJoseph of Liverpool provided background music.

The American Library Association has recorded more than 8,000 formal complaints about library materials since 1990, and more than five times that number of complaints have been handled informally, the ALA estimates.

"In May of 1953, with the country in the grip of McCarthyism, librarians declared the `Freedom to Read’ of every American resident,” OCPL Executive Director Joyce M. Latham said. “They believed then, as we do now, that the suppression of ideas through the control of the written word is the real threat to a democracy.”

She added, “The celebration of Banned Books Week is a recognition that what people read is deeply important — deeply important to freedom as a way of life."

Banned Books Week 2007 is slated for September 29–October 6.

 

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