Librarian Trevor held a volunteer meeting today. Actually, his official title is 'Director' which, to me, is less informative and seems a little haughty for village libraries like ours. He wisely held the meeting the hour before the library opened and had coffee and donuts waiting for us. A good start to a successful meeting is timing/location/ and shamefully plying your audience's vices. We had a good turnout w/ only two volunteers who couldn't make it. Trevor had a full agenda going over the next three months and what activities he has planned for each week. There is even a 'Banned Book Week'. The discussion there was do we display books banned in the last five years or over the last century? Picking books banned recently usually means those w/ LGBT etc. content and that might result in some raw emotions. We'll go w/ historically banned books which were banned for a whole host of reasons. When I got home I checked books in my private library and found a number of the books have been banned:
Alice in Wonderland - U.S. in 1960's, promotion of drug usage
Lord of the Rings trilogy - Alamogordo NM in 2001, being 'Satanic'. Copies of the books were burned.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - U.S. in 1885, described as trashy and conflicting w/the views of the community
1001 Arabian Nights - Egypt in 1980's, accused of being obscene and containing references to vice and sin.
The Works of William Shakespeare - Florida due to 2023 law, sexual and gender-bending content in Romeo and Juliet and The 12th Night. Fortunately, Florida decided banning Shakespeare went too far.
As I checked farther, over half of the fiction books in my collection had been banned at some time somewhere. I assure you my collection is not salacious. (To be completely honest I do own a copy of 'The Joy of Sex' but c'mon, that's a classic.)
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