I didn’t mean to create a book tower but earlier in the summer I stacked a couple titles on my nightstand after I’d finished them and I’ve been adding on over the past several weeks. Total so far: 35. Now if I could just discipline myself to write about what I read this whole reading blog thing could really come together for me…
Category Archives: Reflections
My Summer of Reading
Filed under Reflections
Pleasantville Public Library
In the 1998 movie Pleasantville starring Toby Maguire and Reese Witherspoon, David is a dorky high school student obsessed with an old black and white TV show called “Pleasantville.” The show is set in 1958 and depicts a small town that proudly upholds family values, and has no homelessness and no inclement weather. David and his sister Jen are transported into the show as the main character, Bud, and his sister Mary Sue. The two must navigate this scarily “pleasant” world until they figure out how to return to the present day. Jen in particular is quickly exasperated by the wholesome naïveté of Pleasantville residents. She boldly invites the star of the high school basketball team to accompany her to Lover’s Lane, and after their evening together he starts to see in color. Slowly, as a result of Jen’s and David’s presence, more and more of the townspeople begin to change from black, white and gray to vivid color. The shift from black and white to color signifies an awakening for the character, and each character turns to color for different reasons.
The librarian in Pleasantville is significant by his/her absence. On their first day in Pleasantville, David and Jen attend school and Jen ends up in the library only because she “got lost.” Once there, she discovers that all of the books are blank. The implication is that no one in Pleasantville has need of information, nor for a librarian. Certainly, Jen’s classmates lack curiosity about the world outside of Pleasantville; their geography class focuses onMain StreetandElm Street, Pleasantville’s two major roads.
The books begin to fill in once more young people start to change into color. They are suddenly more inquisitive and demonstrate critical thinking skills. In one scene, the young people are queued up outside the library. Jen (as Mary Sue) changes into color as a result of reading. Some of the townspeople remark incredulously, “Now they’re going to the library!” and one man even responds, “Someone ought to do something about that.” A town council of black and white people decides that “the area known as Lover’s Lane and the library are closed until further notice” while the elementary and high schools will teach the “non change-ist view of history.”
Once things start to become colored in Pleasantville, the library represents change and intellectual freedom, which some characters feel is inherently dangerous. A book burning is depicted, with black and white characters looting the library and tossing the books into a bonfire in the street outside the building. The characters who participate support the mayor who is the most resistant to any changes in Pleasantville. The mayor argues that the values that make Pleasantville great are threatened by such scandalous acts as “thinking.”
Ultimately, the Pleasantville library is a positive force in the town; it is seen as a center of civilization and culture from which beauty springs forth. By the end of the movie, the entire town ofPleasantvilleis in full color, and even with an uncertain future looming before them, the residents are happy.
Filed under Library and Information Science, Reflections
Albus Dumbledore is a Censor
In honor of Banned Books Week 2011, a reflection on censorship and Harry Potter:
For more than a decade, discussions of children’s literature, libraries and censorship inevitably mention Harry Potter. However, those discussions rarely—if ever—feature an analysis of the library and incidents of censorship within the series itself. J.K. Rowling offers much to consider on both counts:
Madam Irma Pince, the librarian at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where Harry Potter receives six years of magical education, is described as a “thin, irritable woman who look[s] like an underfed vulture” (CS 163). Forever “suspicious” of the students (CS 164), she “has been known to add unusual jinxes to the books in her care” (QA). J.K. Rowling characterizes (and even names) Madam Pince with the stereotype of an old maid librarian whom the students think is “barking mad” (HBP 307). A guardian of “her” books (QA), Madam Pince is often “breathing down [students’] necks” (SS 198). She “brandish[es] a featherduster” at Harry during his very first visit to the library and demands, “What are you looking for, boy?” (SS 198). Years later Madam Pince bewitches Harry’s own school books to whack him repeatedly over the head when she discovers Harry eating chocolate in the library (OP 655). Though Harry and his friends frequent the library during their school years, they never ask Madam Pince for her help in their research. Rather, they avoid her and discover information on their own. They approach her on only one occasion, when they need her to retrieve a book from the Restricted Section. Thus, as a character, the information professional is superfluous to the Harry Potter story, and Madam Pince ultimately reinforces the negative stereotype of a librarian.
The Hogwarts library, however, is essential to the plot of the entire Harry Potter series. On two occasions (SS & GF), Harry uses his invisibility cloak to sneak into the library after hours to do research, and Harry’s best friend Hermione Granger spends more time in the library than any other main character. Hermione, the best student in Harry’s class, utilizes the library not only for schoolwork, but also to research issues of personal interest and to help Harry as he confronts various challenges. Indeed when Harry and Hermione, along with Ron Weasley, prepare for their most dangerous challenge in the final book, Ron jokes that the three will be “hunting down Voldemort in a mobile library” (DH 95). By continually referring to the library (or books retrieved from the library) as a source of key information, Rowling highlights the significant contribution of a library to one’s formal and informal education.
The most referenced and quoted incident of censorship in the Harry Potter series occurs when Ministry of Magic representative turned Hogwarts professor Dolores Umbridge instates “Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven,” banning an alternative magazine called The Quibbler which features a controversial interview with one Mr. Harry Potter. As Hermione points out, “if [Umbridge] could have done one thing to make absolutely certain that every single person in [the] school will read [Harry’s] interview, it was banning it!” (OP 582). Rowling reveals the ineffectiveness of censors and the shrewdness with with young people circumvent them.
Another, less noticeable incident of censorship serves as a significant plot point in the series: Rowling reveals that Tom Riddle, who becomes the dark wizard Voldemort, learned a great deal of dark magic from books in the Hogwarts library. In the case of Horcruxes, which involve murder, “Voldemort g[ets] all the instruction he need[s] from [a library book]” (DH 102). Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore removes all of the Horcrux books from the library, but not until well after Tom Riddle has attained access to them. Here, Rowling illuminates an ethical dilemma for librarians in regard to equal access to information: when he is underage, Tom Riddle uses information he found in the school library to commit crimes against other people; Dumbledore makes the choice to censor that information by removing it from the library collection, yet Harry and his friends have no hope of defeating their foe without access to that same information.
Considering the psychology of the censor, Dumbledore’s decision merits deliberation: Dumbledore consistently demonstrates wisdom and is widely believed to be a talented educator and leader, yet he freely admits to weaknesses, to the capacity for grave errors in judgment. Certainly Dumbledore has his critics. Does this example make a case for some censorship being acceptable? Moreover, the Hogwarts library contains the aforementioned Restricted Section (which is where the material in question was shelved in the first place): is this, in effect, a form of censorship that is acceptable?
Key:
SS=Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
CS=Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
GF=Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
OP=Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
HBP=Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
DH=Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
QA=Quidditch Through the Ages
Filed under Library and Information Science, Reflections, YA Literature
Ten Years Later
When I was a kid, one of my ambitions was to become famous and have my birthday declared a national holiday. Not so much in the vein of Washington or Lincoln, but perhaps in the way that Theodore Geisel’s birthday is celebrated as Read Across America Day. So on that Tuesday morning ten years ago, in the midst of my dismay, I thought, “This is not what I meant at all.”
Where were you?
My older relatives tell stories about where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of President Kennedy’s assassination or Martin Luther King, Jr’s. For a brief period of time the only vaguely similar experience I had was the news of Princess Diana’s fatal accident. I didn’t know what it felt like to live with such an indelible before and after.
My roommate Velika woke me up that morning after having taken a phone call from my husband (then my boyfriend of two years). He was on campus for his weekly ROTC muster and called to tell us to turn on the news. Velika and I were are not morning people. After she relayed the (wildly understated) message that a plane crashed in New York, we both went back to bed. It was probably at least two hours more before we were functional enough to begin to take in the scope of the tragedy.
The night before, I had been in a multicultural literature class and the professor had emphasized the importance of viewing the world from varied perspectives, especially those that clash with our own. “There are only so many stories,” she insisted, “but infinite points of view.” In our first post 9/11 class meeting, she simply stated, “The world has changed.”
Where are you now?
My husband and I have been married for eight years, parents for six. We lived on the east coast for four years. I was a teacher for three. Yet that journey seems more like a big circle than a straight road that stretches out behind me. Maybe I feel this way because my house is 7 miles due east of the apartment I was living in ten years ago. For all the experiences I’ve had in the past ten years, how much have I changed?
I just finished reading an NPR article discussing American life in the aftermath of 9/11. The article raises the same questions—has the world changed? Has American life changed?
Freelance journalist Alex Chadwick feels, “since Sept. 11, Americans are ‘more angry, more sorrowful, as though we’ve gotten about 20 years older — or even more — in a decade, but without any of the wisdom or grace that comes to some with age.’”
In many ways, I feel that I’m much the person as I was back then, for better or for worse. And it seems the same may be said of our nation. Older? Definitely. Wiser? To be determined.
Where do we go from here?
9/11 is at once distant and personal for me. My mom and her family are New Yorkers, but no one connected to us was directly affected by the tragedy. In San Diego, CA, I was about as far away from Ground Zero as I could have been while still within the continental US. Yet it is always with me.
Today is my 32nd birthday. I feel neither old nor young. Ten years from now I think I will have figured out what I want to be when I grow up and achieved a few more of my life goals.
Today, the thought of the people who died ten years ago still brings the sting of tears to my eyes. Ten years from now I hope it still does. As much as I may wonder at the unaltered aspects of American life, I would never deny the irrevocable way in which so many American lives were shattered by 9/11.
Today is Patriot Day. Ten years from now I hope I finally understand what that means. Or, at least, what being a patriot means to me. Because for the past ten years, I haven’t felt particularly patriotic when I’ve tired of the solemnity of the memorials overshadowing one of the few days of the year that I really want to celebrate. In fact, I haven’t felt particularly patriotic for much at all of the past ten years because I was one of those people who, in 2001, agreed with Arundhati Roy’s controversial post-9/11 essays “The Algebra of Infinite Justice” and “War is Peace” in which she harshly criticized my country and its government.
Still, every year the wish I make when I blow out my candles isn’t for me, but for our world. You know I can’t tell you exactly what my wish is…but if you had a birthday wish today, what would it be?
Filed under Reflections
Ontology in Library Science
Today I’m letting my inner nerd out to play…
Wittgenstein argued, “the root cause of…ontological challenges lies not only in semantics but also in the underlying logic of classification: Consider for example, the proceedings we call games. I mean, board games, card games, ball games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?” (Morville 2005, 133)
It’s part of an information specialist’s job to identify the commonality in documents or artifacts, and duly classify and catalog them so that others may access the information.
I don’t aspire to be a cataloger but it is an aspect of any librarian’s work to understand these things. And I couldn’t resist indulging in a bit of philosophical musing since the topic of ontology itself (the study of the nature of being, existence or reality) reminded me of reading Descartes in Philosophy 101. It became an exercise in precise langauge:
I pulled Joel Feinberg’s Reason and Responsibility off my bookshelf, thinking I would revisit Descartes’ musings on the melted candle and quickly discovered that “melted candle” was my own interpretation of Descartes’ discussion in “Meditation II” from “Meditations on First Philosophy”—Descartes does not use the word candle. Rather he uses the word “wax.” Now, with my curiosity piqued, I decided to google “Descartes melted candle” to see if the results would pull up “Meditation II” or if I would need to change my query.
Search terms play a huge role in accessing information. The first result in my google search took me to “Meditation VI,” not “II.” More interestingly, the third result was a paper discussing the very fact that Descartes uses the word “wax” rather than “candle!” Then I opened a new tab so I could change my query to “Descartes wax,” and the first result this time was the Wikipedia article on Descartes which mentions his “Wax Argument.”
Because I’m a word geek, I consulted my handy paperback copy of The Merriam-Webster Dictionary New Edition and looked up “wax” (a yellowish plastic substance secreted by bees for constructing the honeycomb) and “candle” (a usu. slender mass of tallow or wax molded around a wick that is burned to give light). The definition of “candle” led me to consider the following:
On my mantle, there is a mass of wax molded around a wick—is it a candle if the wick has never been burned? Does a candle’s existence depend upon the wick being burned and the wax being melted? Or is the potential for the burning and melting sufficient to bring the candle into existence? The definition of “wick” reads, “a loosely bound bundle of soft fibers that draws up oil, tallow or wax to be burned in a candle, oil lamp or stove.”
So I suppose it is a candle, then, that reposes between the Tibetan song bowl and the Our Lady of Fatima figurine, but my understanding of a candle and a wick are that each relies upon the other for its own existence, or sense of being.
My contemplation of candles and wax led me to wonder, are information and accessibility also inextricably linked? In order to be information, must a given document be accessible? Or is the does the document’s existence render it “information” regardless of whether a person can access it?
Filed under Library and Information Science, Reflections
Feeling Better?
Thank you to everyone who has been checking up on me. I’m touched! And, yes, I am finally feeling better. It had been a while since I’d gotten sick and I was a bit surprised at how long it took for me to get back on track.
Of course now my To-Do list has grown exponentially. I am feeling badly about that. Is that crazy? I mean, I know that I could not function properly with a monster cold that included a hacking cough and laryngitis. Yet I’m mad at myself for letting so much stuff pile up. So I feel both better…and worse. Ugh. Didn’t I resolve to be kinder to myself this year?
The thing is, with March right around the corner, I’m feeling a bit apprehensive. Any teacher will concur: March is a terrible month. I think of it as “Marathon Month” because it just goes on forever, especially in the years when Easter is in April. This March, my husband is shifting into pre-deployment mode which means an (even more) erratic schedule for him while I have assignments due every single week for my classes.
I don’t want to be in survival mode for the next month but I don’t really have a plan so I’d love to get some insight from you.
What do you do to feel better about a daunting task? How do you pace yourself when faced with a full calendar? And what keeps you motivated?
Filed under Reflections
Irony: Library student with delinquent patron record
Last semester I read Defusing the Angry Patron for one of my grad school classes. It contains great practical advice for librarians (and teachers too) who must cope with confrontational patrons/parents who are upset about one thing or another in the library. Often these patrons are upset about the content of some book and feel the offensive material should be removed and the librarian should remove it right now! Other times patrons are frustrated with library policy or procedure.
Though I’ve been a library patron since age two, I was never an angry patron until the other day when I discovered that my library account is “delinquent.” When I asked why, I was informed that I caused “severe water damage” to a book and my account is delinquent “pending assessment of a fine.”
Me: What? Which book? How is that possible? May I see this alleged water damage?
The woman working at the circulation desk avoided eye contact with me throughout our whole conversation. She explained to her computer screen that when I returned the book (nearly two months ago) she remembers that it was “very damaged.” She personally marked it as such and flagged my account. The book was then returned to its home library and is apparently sitting in some inbox until a tech services person decides how much to charge me for it.
Clearly this librarian(?) needs to read Defusing the Angry Patron. She demonstrated terrible nonverbal communication skills and used “the library F word.”
No one contacted me about this at all and it was somewhat accidental that I even discovered the status of my account in the first place. I guess this library does not contact patrons regarding damaged materials—at least not in a timely manner. That’s a poor policy if ever there was one.
I did not water damage this book. In fact I barely even opened the book; I only borrowed it so I could check something on the copyright page. I returned it in precisely the condition it was lent to me; I don’t remember it being damaged when I checked it out (and I would notice such a thing—I’ve worked in circulation too and I know how to take care of books!).
I’ve twice called the book’s home library and gotten the run around because they’re backed up and don’t know when they’ll get around to looking at this book.
Meanwhile, “DELINQUENT” appears across the top of the screen whenever I log into my library account or try to check out other books.
Grrrrrr. Right now I’m about as happy with the library as I am with insurance companies and if I were just another patron I’d be done with this public library. I’m that frustrated by this incident.
Sadly, this is one of the big reasons why public libraries lose patrons: a combination of poor communication and poor policy/procedure.
To my fellow LIS students and library friends, let’s please do better!
Filed under Reflections, SLIS Stuff
Battle Bullying with Books
Starting Young
Last week, my daughter told me about a troubling recess incident at her school: apparently, a game of “Lego City Police” devolved into the playground version of police brutality. Teachers were alerted and intervened but not before one of my daughter’s kindergarten classmates was punched and scratched by another kid.
In her responses to my “casual” questions, my daughter revealed that the boy who was punched/scratched is not well liked among his peers. She says the other boys don’t like him because he doesn’t brush his teeth. The only girl police officer in the game, my daughter backed away when the punching started and didn’t know what to do. The boy who did the punching/scratching has often been sent to the principal’s office but my daughter thinks he is silly and says funny things in class.
Wow. All this just in time for No Name Calling Week.
Bullying Statistics
Some parents may feel it is an overreaction on my part to be concerned that the Lego City Police incident could be a precursor to bullying. However, the statistics are alarming: 160,000 students per day skip school in fear of attack or bullying; out of 37 studied shootings, 66% of them were led by individuals who felt bullied; and 20% of high school students say they’ve considered suicide within the past twelve months, mentioning the triggers as bullying, teasing, and social rejection. (These figures are borrowed from a library colleague; I didn’t ask for her sources).
The messages sent to my daughter and her classmates about this incident matter. The time to address these issues is now, and the time to lay the foundation for the prevention of future bullying is now.
Don’t just read. Discuss what you read.
My way of addressing issues typically involves books and I am familiar with the skepticism toward my approach: can books really change the world? Can reading really change lives?
Jenny Betz, Education Manager for GLSEN, suggested a different spin on these questions yesterday in “Battle Bullying with Books,” a webinar sponsored by Booklist. Betz says that perhaps not the books themselves but the conversations around those books are what truly have the power to change lives.
One of my favorite aspects of teaching is listening to young people talk about issues of importance to them. With civil discourse eroding before our eyes and disturbingly venomous speech flying around, it feels increasingly important to teach youth how to engage in respectful conversation with others. I think using literature to open up dialogue is a great place to start.
Alone, the act of reading will not teach a child how to recognize and understand his emotions, will not create empathy. But coupled with discussion, reading can help foster sensitivity and healthy relationships.
The thing to remember with discussion is that being “right” isn’t the point. It’s more important to understanding what the other person is saying. We adults are so eager to impart wisdom to young people that sometimes we talk too much. We want young people to listen to us, but we often fail to reciprocate and truly listen to them.
All It Takes is One
In the past decade, innumerable titles have been published that deal with the subject of bullying for kids of all ages. Last year author Mitali Perkins compiled a list of great titles for young adults (ages 12+). For emergent readers (ages 5-8) the recent Benny and Penny in the Toy Breaker by Geoffrey Hayes is a good one and the upcoming The Three Bully Goats by Leslie Kimmelman seems promising. James Howe, author of Bunnicula, published The Misfits in 2001 for middle grade readers. Loosely based on his daughter’s experience at the hands of middle school bullies, The Misfits is the book that launched No Name Calling Week.
My personal favorite is One by Kathryn Otoshi, published in 2008 by KO Kids Books. This profound picture book is accessible for very young children but has an elegant, Zen flair that makes it appealing for tweens and teens as well. Every preschool and elementary school library needs a copy of this book, and it would make a terrific teacher gift as well. (Coincidentally, I had given my daughter’s teacher a copy of One earlier this month. She read it to the class this week and the kids’ response to it was very encouraging.)
Summary: Generally, Blue feels happy and life is good. Except when Red gets mad and takes it out on Blue. Those are the times when Blue feels, well, blue. And Red sometimes makes Orange, Purple, Green, and Yellow feel blue too. Red is a bully but the other colors don’t quite know what to do about it until One comes along and teaches an important lesson—that everyone counts!
Counting by ones may seem like a slow process—one book, one teacher, one kid, one parent—but we never know which one moment can be a turning point. I, for one, don’t want to allow a single opportunity to slip by.
Filed under Booklists, Picture Books, Reading Activities, Reflections
Good Intentions
Yesterday I finally made my way back to yoga class. There’s plenty for me to be discouraged about: my Down Dog and Warrior II are pitiful compared to all these spry retirees! It will be a while before my Dancer looks like this again.
However, more than just my stiff joints and muscles were imploring me to unroll my green mat again.
Yoga helps me to be kind to myself and 20 days into the New Year, I find that out of all my resolutions and goals for 2011 the most important is for me to take care of myself and ease up on the self-criticism.
In my study of world religions I learned about the Buddhist principle of Right Intention but it was through a yoga class that I developed an understanding of how the concept could apply to my life. Philip Moffitt describes the idea in this wonderful article called “The Heart’s Intention.”
Some key ideas from the article:
- “Goals help you make your place in the world and be an effective person. But being grounded in intention is what provides integrity and unity in your life.”
- “Intention is what provides you with self-respect and peace of mind.”
- “There’s no need to judge yourself or quit when you fail to live by your intentions. You are developing the habit of right intention so that it becomes an unconscious way of living-an automatic response to all situations.”
- “There are only two things you are responsible for in this practice: Throughout each day, ask yourself if you are being true to your deepest intentions. If you’re not, start doing so immediately, as best as you’re able.”
In a management course last spring, I likened the idea of intention to the vision statement one might incorporate in strategic planning. An effective vision statement for an organization is rooted in values and offers guidance in decision-making. Just as a vision is different from a goal, intention is based on an understanding of what matters most to you and requires a commitment to align your actions with your values. I used lighthouses as the main visual image in my PowerPoint for that presentation.
This blog is one of the areas I’ve carefully considered as I’ve made goals and reflected on my intentions. What began as a fun distraction for this Navy wife while her husband was away has turned into one of the “unfinished” projects that I feel guilty about. (Silly, I know, but as I said, I’m very hard on myself.) One of my long-standing professional goals has been to create a teaching resource, but achieving that goal with this blog was never my intention. I needed to remind myself that this “database” is merely an experiment.
What I really need is a data entry assistant but it will be a few years before my daughter is ready for the job. Eight should be a good age to put her to work, right?
For now, I’m going to approach this blog differently. I’ll still add reviews but I may as well admit that this isn’t a book blog. This year, I’ll be nurturing my family through another deployment, completing a few more classes toward my degree, and reading, reading, reading. Here is where I’ll reflect on it all.
I’m looking forward to sharing the journey with you.
Filed under Reflections
To Boycott or Not to Boycott?
As a long time amazon.com customer, I’m really torn over whether to boycott the site after the incident with the pedophilia book.
Like most librarians, I’m a staunch defender of the freedom to read. In a piece titled “A Few Words about Censorship,” Chris Crutcher–a personal hero of mine–says, “If you live in a democracy, and you want to participate in that democracy, you have to learn to stand up for the expression of things you hate. It’s easy to promote material that represents what you believe—a little harder to do that for material that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.”
Crutcher, in addition to being a writer, is a therapist who has worked extensively with abused kids. He believes that there are some people who need to be kept away from kids, and I agree wholeheartedly.
Even though I find both content and writer of this book to be despicable, the author has the right to free expression and others have the right to read it if they choose. Do not mistake me, however: NO ONE has the right to harm a child.
My issue with amazon.com is that the company does not have a policy for selecting or screening the products available for sale on the site. Even in a public library where the principles of information access and intellectual freedom are tenaciously protected, a selection policy serves to guide librarians in choosing materials by offering clear standards and criteria. In the absence of such a policy, there is neither accountability nor a systematic, objective way to evaluate materials.
Amazon.com’s mission statement reads: Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
This incident shows amazon.com to be consistent with its vision—clearly people can find and discover anything, and the company did respond to customers when demands were made that the company pull the objectionable material “off the shelves.”
Just because amazon.com can sell anything, doesn’t mean they should. Even libraries toe the line: back in the early 90s, when Madonna’s book Sex was published, plenty of librarians chose not to add the book to their collections because it did not reflect the standards of decency in their communities.
Many people within the library community have chosen to boycott amazon.com. This latest incident is merely the proverbial straw on the back of the camel, as there are a number of good reasons to avoid what some are calling the Wal-Mart of online shopping.
As an information resource, amazon.com is incredibly useful to me in my research, primarily on books but for other products as well. I will continue to use the site in this way, and I will continue to link book titles here to their product pages on amazon.com.
As for shopping…those who argue that amazon.com is no better than Wal-Mart have a point. I don’t shop at Wal-Mart, and I’ve substantially reduced the shopping I do at Target.
If I give up on amazon.com as well, where does that leave me? I already try to support local, independent booksellers as much as possible—places like Jabberwocky, Riverby, Point Loma Books and Yellow Brick Road.
I’m also unsure that I believe amazon.com to have been in the wrong over the availability of the book. Whereas traditional publishing channels would likely have prevented such offensive material from finding an audience, self-publishing in the digital age is new territory for everyone involved in information access.
I’d love to hear from those who have taken a definitive stand and chosen to boycott—what alternatives to amazon.com do you recommend? I’d also love to hear from those who aren’t boycotting—what are your reasons?
For the time being, I’m going to spend more money than I planned at the book fair at my daughter’s school and I’ll continue pondering how much holiday shopping I’ll be doing through amazon.com this year.
Filed under Reflections
