Be sure to check out this year’s Freedom To Read Week events in your local area. Those of you living in the Edmonton area may want to show your support at Edmonton Public Library’s Banned Books Cafe on March 1st.

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It has been very busy as of late, but this story is well worth repeating. The Internet has been an incredibly empowering and democratizing force for many netizens, but yet tragically freedom of speech and thought are far from universally acceptable laws. One has to really question Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and other corporations that woulds […]

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It looks as though China has blocked its citizens from accesing Typepad-hosted blogs. The only way that many bloggers have reported being able to access their site is via their RSS aggregators. The details are somewhat fuzzy, although the details and comments in this post reveal that there is most definitely an issue of censorship […]

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ALA’s over how to address the Cuban libraries situation has been making news for some time now. The following announcement appeared on the ALA homepage this week…
Over the past several months, several reporters have written about the American Library Association’s (ALA) position on intellectual freedom in Cuba. In an effort to provide access […]

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You have to love titles like this one, Defender of the Free World, or anytime “librarian” appears next to the word “hellraiser.” This is good reading on a very frightening issue courtesy of Mother Jones magazine.
You can ask Trina Magi anything; she’s ready to help you find the answer. Who, exactly, was on Richard Nixon’s […]

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Lock up your almanacs — the FBI has issued an almanac alert. Kevin Seabrooke, senior editor of World Almanac, adds his two cents, “We’re talking about information that’s readily available from many other sources,” Seabrooke said. “The idea of using it for terrorism never even occurred to me. They certainly didn’t need […]

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While looking for some information on book censorship, I happened across the HPANA - The Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator.

There are a multitude of Web sites that post news and rumors about the Harry Potter world. The Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator (HPANA) was created to monitor several of the top news sources on […]

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Picking Brains and Noses via the Alameda Times-Star:
The children’s book series “Captain Underpants” has made it onto best seller lists everywhere, but the humorous “epic novels” also have the dubious distinction of being the tomes people love to hate.
Dav Pilkey’s illustrated creations have irked parents enough to land on the sixth spot on the American […]

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Now that I have your attention, I would like to point you to Annalee Newitz’s article in AlterNet about the slippery slope between Internet filtering and book censorship. I can’t stress enough that one’s time and energy is much better invested in selection of sites, rather than restriction of sites. Throw in a little education […]

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Yes, it has been one of those days when laughter has kept the ship afloat. Although everyone has heaps of work piling up around them, it’s a pleasure to be around people who can still crack a smile.
I will be in Jasper for the next few days attending ALC and doing my bit as a […]

Posted in Blogosphere, Censorship, Handheld/Wireless News, Libraries, Politicians and Rabble-rousers, Scholarly Communication 2 Comments »