While stereotypically thought of as quiet and mousy, librarians (the 1980 Census showed that 85% of librarians were women) may be the biggest fighters for intellectual freedom in the US today. Since the Bush administration took office in 2001 and launched various campaigns to censor scientific information, as well as spy on the activities of Americans, librarians have been at the forefront of the fight for freedom of speech, privacy, and access to information.

If you live in the United States and you want to get your YouTube fix, you flip on your computer, log on to the site and you're good to go. But if you happen to live in China, you're just as liable to flip on your computer, type in the YouTube address and get an error message and a blank screen.  At first you might think, oh my computer's slow today or something must be going on with the server, but you'd probably be wrong.  That's because China's been blocking YouTube to its citizens for the last several weeks in order to block the viewing of videos of anti-China protests in Tibet.  Many of those protests have become violent and depending on who you believe, they were fostered by pro-democracy pioneers who were set upon and brutalized by the Chinese government or rioting agitators determined to foster unrest and make China look bad, especially during this Olympic year.

One of the great things about blogging is that it gives me two times a year to publicly celebrate banned, challenged and censored books. In September the American Library Association recognizes Banned Books Week. Every February the Freedom of Expression Committee, a part of the Book and Periodical Council of Canada celebrates Freedom To Read Week. I love banned books, challenged books, and books that people attempt to censor. Nothing will get a book on my To Be Read list faster than hearing that someone is trying to keep me from reading it.

I was going to write a post, at my friend Viviane’s urging, about women sex bloggers who are persecuted and their blogs shut down because their frankness offends members of their extended real world community, but I think the real issue we need to talk about is the high price women are made to pay, again and again, both for being sexual and for speaking their mind. It’s not about the blogs, you see, it’s about the right for complete self expression. In other words, it’s about being silenced.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in the country with her family. Her siblings were all older than her and there were no other children her age in the neighbourhood. But there were lots of books in the house and while the pictures were fun she really wanted to know what the words were. So she begged and begged until her family broke down and taught her how to read at the tender age of four. A lifetime love of books and reading was born.

We're about a week away from Banned Book Week. It only seems appropriate to pay homage to those that are on the front lines of the fight against censorship - librarians. When you think of librarians do you still think of the ladies who looked cranky and were constantly telling you to - "Hush" and "Be quiet!"?

This is really stunning, because they cut away from her- and didn't just bleep her when she said "goddamn." Seems political to me... From the LATimes blog:

Near the beginning of the summer I started a series of posts about a case of book banning at a high school in Oklahoma. The book in question is Maureen Johnson's Bermudez Triangle. I figured if I really wanted to talk about the challenge I should probably actually read the book. So that's what I did this weekend.