Book Banning
Wit’s End Bookstore now has new owners & a new website WitÕs
End Books.
(The links below are still valid for searching elsewhere.)
Sites on Book Banning | Quotes About
Book Banning
Amendment I:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government
for a redress of grievances.
---The Bill of
Rights
Every year, books in the U.S. and around the world are challenged. Some of the
challenged books are banned, some aren't. The punishment for ignoring these bans
range from almost nonexistent to severe.
Sites on Book Banning
ACLU Banned
Books Week
Banned Books
Week is a time to celebrate literature and art and examine the strains of intolerance
and repression that continue to haunt our society. For 200 years the right to
choose what to see and hear has been one of our most cherished freedoms. Fight
book banning and censorship when it happens in your community, and exercise your
right to read the books that others would ban out of fear.
Afronet-Banned Books-Intro
Banned, Censored or Controversial Books in the African American Community.
Banned Books
A book store featuring controversial books, videos and audio tapes that may be
politically or religiously incorrect as well as information about book banning
and censorship.
Banned Books and Censorship:
Information and Resources
Useful links to resources and information on why people ban books, its results,
and rights to free speech. It is part of Loyola University Chicago Libraries.
Banned Books
On-line
Welcome to this special exhibit of books that have been the objects of censorship
or censorship attempts. This page lists banned books and resources about censorship
available found on the web.
Banned Books Week '97
Banned Books Week '97 is September 20 - 28. Information on book banning can be
found here as well as information on Banned Books Week can be found here.
Also see
Banned Books Week '97
Another official site Banned Books Week '97. Very graphic intensive.
Banned in
the U.S.A.
A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries by Herbert
N. Foerstel. The publisher's information on the book, as well as information on
ordering it is located here.
BiblioBytes Banned Books
Part of BiblioBytes, this page lists where and
why books were banned as well as ordering information.
Bonfire of
Liberties
"The bonfire was a very efficient form of censorship in an age when books
were handwritten and existed in few copies. But in the era of printing and mass
markets, burning a book has been reduced to merely a shocking gesture." A
valuable resource on censorship.
Book Banning
Threatens Freedom
Featured story of The Profile, the official student newspaper of Hendrix
College, published September 21, 1995 in preparation for Banned Books Week 95.
It has some good history information in it.
Censored
This web page was created to observe Banned Books Week 1996, and proved to be
one of the most often visited pages at the Lucy Carson Library web site. They
have decided to maintain this page and update it when possible.
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
Hey, Comics are a form of free speech too!
The CBLDF exists to fight censorship and defend the first amendment rights of
comic book professionals throughout the United States.
El Paso Public Library,
Banned Books Online A special exhibit of books that have been the objects
of censorship or censorship attempts. Well organize and very informative.
Free Expression
Part of American Booksellers Association's BookWeb, Free Expression contains many
valuable links to other site on censorship, as well as features from the Free
Expression Newsletter.
The File
Room
The File Room is an illustrated archive on censorship which you can browse, as
well as add cases to.
Focus on the Family
Calls 'Banned Books Week' a Fraud
Here is an article on American Library Association (ALA) Banned Books Week and
what some fill it stands for.
Index on Censorship
As a bi-monthly magazine for free speech, Index on Censorship has educated
people since 1972. Now you can find them on-line, bringing you information on
their current issue, as well as a country by country round-up of free speech abuses,
and why censorship is not just someone else's problem.
Also see
Index on Censorship
Banned Books Auction
To raise money for research and supplying Index on Censorship to readers in the
developing world and Eastern Europe unable to pay for it, there will be an auction
of banned books, banning orders, suppressed documents, etc in London on 6 November.
Internet Public Library
IPL's goals include finding, organizing, and creating quality information resources,
creating a fun and easy to use resource with an awareness of the different needs
of young people, learning more on what does and does not work on the web and "uphold
the values important to librarians, in particular those expressed in the Library
Bill of Rights". As well as providing a much needed library on the web, it
also fights for the values important to success of libraries on and off the web.
They have created and maintain pages on both the Telecommunications
Reform Bill and Banned
Books Week.
Karen's Kitchen
Banned Books Page
A list of banned books. Along with the book titles, Karen includes where the books
are banned and why.
"The Most
Frequently Banned Books in the 1990s"
This list shows the fifty books that were most frequently challenged in schools
and public libraries in the United States between 1990 and 1992. This list is
taken from Banned in the U.S.A. by Herbert N. Foerstel, which has more
information about the efforts to ban each title.
Vintage Vonnegut
An anti-censorship speech by Kurt Vonnegut. Take a moment, read the speech, and
think about what he says.
Quotes About Book Banning
"There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance."
---Goethe
"Did you ever hear anyone say, 'That work had better be banned because
I might read it and it might be very damaging to me'?"
---Joseph Henry Jackson
"One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does
not fit the present."
---Golda Meir
"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."
---John Morley
"I never knew a girl who was ruined by a book. "
---James Walker
w