PD postings- blog review

http://blog.indexoncensorship.org/2013/05/07/free-expression-in-the-news-7/#comments

 I found a blog relating to censorship around the world, and then read the comments attached to the blog and added one of my own.

 Censorship is a major issue in Australia and around the world, and it seems to have society divided. With this differing of opinions in mind, I found a blog which focuses on censorship and free speech. This particular blog is made up of updates from around the world which relate to censorship in various forms.  While I am familiar with the blatant forms of censorship and how it directly impacts libraries, it was interesting to learn the other various forms censorship can take. It was also enlightening to know how other countries are being affected by this issue. In a children and youth library context, viewing this blog and its comments is reinforcing the impact of censorship, as a children’s or youth librarian, I am now more aware of the various forms censorship can take. Hopefully this suggests I will be able to better combat censorship in the future, so as not to restrict any collection development which may disadvantage any future library users. It also provides motivation to become more aware of the issue, as I am now feeling very much in the dark, having only previously considered the issue of censorship in Australian libraries, which is a relatively minor field when you consider how this issue is currently affecting the world at large in so many ways.

The best description of censorship I have come across comes from Asheim (1953) when someone is “deprived of access to a particular piece of communication through the action of someone else.” This could be applied to censorship at the government, local or individual level. Within the context of children’s library it could be a book, DVD, etc which is considered inappropriate for children/ youth and as such the children/ youth librarian would be prevented from selecting it by either government regulations, management decisions or by their individual moral and ethical qualms. Small reminders of censorship can be seen in everyday life, I found an example of this when I was flicking through my TV channels and SBS radio with multilingual broadcasts had a description “balanced, impartial Australian and international news and information” which I found interesting as I would not have thought that it was necessary to articulate that the news being transmitted was balanced and impartial. If it is necessary to point this out, it would indicate that bias and censorship are a concern. With censorship being so widespread it is a probability that even though supporters of censorship who could make the argument that they are trying to protect society, especially when it involves children and youth, which is a particularly sensitive issue. Those opposed to censorship would argue that no one has the right of denying access to or censoring information in any format. With this issue so hotly debated and with its impact being so heavy it would be hoped that this issue will someday be resolved.

Reference List

Ashiem, L (1953) Not censorship but selection. Retrieved 29^th May 2013 from http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/basics/notcensorship

 

PD Posting- observation of a children's program

I went to observe a storytime at my local library.

I hadn’t been to a storytime since I last worked in a public library earlier this year. I worked in a public library in a very multicultural metropolitan area and I have now moved to a less multicultural, more remote area, and I wanted to see the difference between storytime programs. Things that I looked at were the demographic of the people attending, the format of the program and the materials used. The storytime had an insect theme, with a book with bugs as characters to start, followed by ‘incy wincy spider’ which was sung twice as the first time didn’t have very many of the children doing actions. Then the next 2 books were ‘the very hungry caterpillar’ (a personal favourite of mine J) and then ‘itsby bitsy spider’. They sung ‘row row row your boat’ in between the other books, which I didn’t think fit the theme but the children seemed to enjoy it, and then the last book was followed by a goodbye song. There was a small group of children and their carers, a mix of boys and girls from the ages of 0-5 years from various backgrounds. I personally felt the one father present appeared to feel outnumbered by the amount of women; however he was very interactive with his children and sang songs and performed actions enthusiastically. There was no craft activity which I have never experienced before, so I can confirm not all storytime programs are delivered in the same format .It will be interesting to further investigate how different libraries conduct their storytime programs and develop a format based on the observations of how the participants appear to enjoy the programs. The theme chosen was very safe as it was fairly generic, where all the participants could understand and enjoy the program regardless of their background. Another storytime format which was very different to the one I attended today was a bilingual storytime held at my old library in Ryde NSW. It highlighted the diversity of the community as there were community members from various backgrounds in attendance, although none of them appeared to speak the particular language of the session I attended, which was Greek. The community has a very large Chinese and Korean population and I was informed that these sessions were usually quite full. The need for Children and Youth librarians to maintain a culturally sensitive stance when delivering programs  is crucial as awareness and respect for the cultures which children come from could potentially model their future information seeking behaviours as adults. Even if they are first generation Australians with parents from overseas who have recently immigrated to Australia, the great amount of influence which parents have on their children will contribute to whether or not these children grow up to become frequent library users or not. Ryde’s method of acknowledging the diversity of their community was effective and entertaining, the storytime today was a good example of a generic storytime that appealed to children from all backgrounds, without focussing on the diversity of its participants.

PD posting- website review

I wanted to have a look at a website for young people’s book awards and I found a site for the Young Australian’s best book awards (YABBA).

The URL indicates that the author of the site is an Australian organisation rather than a commercial entity, which lends credibility to the website. There is no specific author mentioned, and the corporate author we can assume is the YABBA organisation. There were sections for students and teachers and the content was tailored specifically for those age groups, with there being few crossovers such as the ‘puzzles’ section which has interactive puzzles such as find words, cross words etc for people to play. If you accessed the puzzles section through the ‘for teachers’ tab, and opened the drop down menu in the ‘for students’ section then the font changed colour indicating it was already in use, which I found quite a useful little detail. The reviews section in the ‘for students’ tab was empty, and as the section for reviews could be accessed via both the students and teachers this was a little disappointing. The website has information for both students and teachers and can ideally be of use to teacher librarians and children and youth librarians as a resource which can be used to assist in the identification of age appropriate literary trends by Australian authors, in particular the reviews section, which is why I was disappointed. As a children’s or youth librarian I would want to use that particular part of the website as a source of information about current literature that may be appropriate for the collection. I didn’t realise there were book awards for individual states, I assumed book awards for young people were a national level event and so it prompted me to investigate into book awards that were state level for future reference, where I found NSW has the Ethel Turner Prize, QLD has a young adult criteria in the Premier’s Literary awards, and there were similar stories in the other states, however when I went to the ‘About YABBA’ section it stated that YABBA was “established in 1985 by a group of Victorians keen to see children engage in reading Australian books. Run by a volunteer committee our goal after more than 25 years is still the same.” (YABBA, 2013). In my opinion this should be replicated across all states and territories as it gives community members a chance to contribute their opinions to the selection of children’s materials in an organized manner.  I think that young people’s book awards are a useful tool in a children and youth library context as they can not only promote appropriate useful literary materials through nominations etc, but they can also provide information on materials that would be suitable for collections for various age groups. “Juvenile literature selectors in academic libraries often concentrate on collecting award winners as the primary focus of the collection.” (2011, pp.47). While set in an academic library context, this principle can also be applied to public and school libraries.

Reference List

Thornton, E.(2011) Globalizing children's literature in academic libraries using automatic acquisition, Collection Building,30 (1), pp.47 - 52

YABBA 2013 About YABBA. Retrieved 19^th May 2013 from http://yabba.org.au

PD posting- book review

Book review- it’s a book by Lane Smith

I chose to review a children’s picture book in this instance because it provides a very funny insight to how young people may think today.

It is a children’s picture book with a short sentence structure, mainly relying on illustrations to tell the story. The characters are a monkey, a jackass and a mouse, who is sitting in a lounge room and the monkey is reading a book, with the jackass asking him questions about the book. The back cover has a summarized version of the content, which gives an indication  of what the book is about – “Can it text? Blog? Scroll? Wi-Fi? Tweet?  No… It’s a book.” (Smith, L. 2010). I liked the book and found it entertaining and funny. It provides a humorous look at modern day children and youth and how they are perceived. Other books such as the “goodnight moon” modern parody “goodnight ipad” by Ann Droyd also indicate this shift away from traditional resources by the children and youth of today. One particular part I found amusing was when a section from Treasure Island was read and then the jackass replied “Too many letters. I’ll fix it.”(Smith, 2010) And proceeded to turn an exchange between Long John Silver and Jim into “LJS: rrrr! K? lol! Jim: L ! J” (Smith, 2010). While not providing any new perspective on the possible future of children and youth library services, It’s a book does provide a very appropriate example of the shift in attitudes where the children reading this book are every bit as likely to be familiar with the technological terms as they are a book.

This has a dramatic impact on the delivery of children and youth services and the extent to which library services can be delivered via traditional methods. While not strictly speaking lessening the impact of traditional services and methods of delivery, we can view this as an opportunity to increase the methods of delivering traditional children and youth programs. An example of this would be story time and homework help, where podcasts of storytime can be uploaded onto a library’s website and homework help can be delivered via an instant messaging function on the website. Book reviews can be shared via library blogs, twitter, facebook and other forms of social media; children are able to attend gaming nights which refer to gaming consoles rather than traditional board games. The list of possibilities is a very long one and if books such as It’s a book can be aimed at children and they are able to understand it then the future development of their understanding. Emerald Management Xtra Complete (EMX) editor Margaret Adolphus in her profile on author of the “shifted librarian” blog Jenny Levine states “Just as libraries provide safe and neutral spaces for people to learn about new technologies, so they can offer a social space to play computer games in a team situation, which encourages interaction”. This highlights the fact that whilst technology can be used to deliver children and youth services to remote participants it can also encourage social interaction.

Reference List

Adolphus, M (n.d.) Jenny Levine on Library 2.0. Retrieved 21^st May, 2013 from http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/librarians/info/viewpoints/j_levine.htm

Smith, L.(2010) It’s a book. Newtown, NSW: Walker Books Australia.

First posting

Hi all! This is my first posting just to get set up, there will be more entries to follow....