Chasing Maturity: Video Games and Sex

I found this 9-ish minute video lecture by Daniel Floyd, a professor at Savannah College of Art and Design, to be funny and interesting. Floyd looks at the history of sex in video games. He states “for as long as sex has existed in games it has been exploitive at worst and superficial at best.”

Floyd argues that there needs to be more sex in video games. He also believes that video games are an artistic medium that is in its infancy and asks “How can you have an art that denies sexuality?”

I realize that this is not really relevant to many library collections. While some public libraries now have video game collections, I don’t know of any that collect Mature or Adults only rated games (Please correct me if I’m wrong).

Thanks Boing Boing again.

Little Sister’s: Vancouver Men’s Chorus - Voices Carry

Check out Vancouver Men’s Chorus performing in Victoria June 7, Nanaimo June 8 and Kelowna June 28.

Nancy Branscombe and Gina Barber receive IF award

Nancy Branscombe and Gina Barber, City Councilors and Library Board Members from London, ON, are the 2008 recipients of the Award for the Advancement of Intellectual Freedom in Canada.

The CLA press release clearly states that librarians were the advocates for internet filtering:

The initial impetus for the London Public Library filtering plan did not come from an outside group or from a group of employees, but from library management, on the grounds that extending filtering was necessary to protect against inadvertent exposure to inappropriate images. Although alternatives to filtering were suggested, such as reconfigured furniture arrangements, better use of privacy screens, and enforcement of existing rules of conduct, and intellectual freedom considerations were stressed, many influential community members and organizations supported filtering, and the issue remained contested at a series of London Public Library Board meetings

Toni Samek, Convenor of the Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom, said that the award will be presented at the CLA conference in Vancouver. Sam Trosow, Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, will organize some sort of celebratory event in London to recognize and honor the recipients.

This award is a great idea.  Most of my posts are about things that suck and erode intellectual freedom.  It’s important to acknowledge when people stick their neck out, and do unpopular things to protect intellectual freedom.  I’m sure the London Public Library Board meetings were extremely uncomfortable and that this was a politically risky thing to stand up for.

I’m going to try and interview them, so if you have any questions you would like me to ask, please leave them in the comments section.

See previous posts:

internet filtering–boo, FIMS faculty–yay!

Filtering Adult Workstations @ London Public Library

London PL filtering update

Freedom of Speech in the Library Workplace

Photo credit: mrkalhoon on flickr

There’s one session at the upcoming CLA conference in Vancouver dealing with intellectual freedom issues. This looks like it could be the library equivalent of the Rumble in the Jungle with Maurice Freedman squaring off against Paul Whitney. Freedman came and spoke while CUPE 391, who represent the Vancovuer Public Library workers, was on strike for pay equity last summer. Whitney is the City Librarian at the Vancouver Public Library.

I’m a fan of Kathleen de la Peňa McCook’s writing, but can’t justify the cost of attending the conference ($525 for the member early bird rate) even though it’s in my city. The conference website irks me. The conference program pdf is especially sucky, as it has been broken into 4 random parts.

Here’s the info on the session (which straddles Part 2 and 3 of the pdf set):

Thursday May 22nd, 4-5:30pm

Inside Talk: Freedom of Speech in the Library Workplace

The Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom brings you the pros and cons of resolutions on workplace speech for library institutions. Panelists Kathleen de la Peňa McCook, Sam Trosow, and Paul Whitney will lead discussion on just what resolutions on workplace speech might look like and mean for the CLA, library administrations, and Canadian library and information work in the 21st century. Audience participation is highly encouraged in this reflective look inside our own institutional culture. Questions to consider are: whose voices are coming through the library channels? and, what is and is not acceptable when librarians participate in citizen journalism that criticizes employers in the blogosphere?

Speakers:

Kathleen de la Peňa McCook, Distinguished University Professor, SLIS, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA
Maurice J. Freedman, MLS, PhD, Past President, American Library Association & Publisher, The U*N*A*B*A*S*H*E*D Librarian, Mount Kisco, NY, USA
Dr. Samuel E. Trosow, Associate Professor, FIMS, University of Western Ontario, London, ON
Paul Whitney, City Librarian, Vancouver Public Library, Vancouver, BC

If you attended the session please leave a comment about your impressions.

Celebrating One Year of Open Medicine @ BCLA

Devon Greyson just posted a summary of this session at the BCLA conference that was cosponsored by the BCLA Intellectual Freedom Committee, BCLA Information Policy Committee, and the Health Library Association of BC.

She writes:

The presentation touched on the issues of editorial independence in medical journals that led up to the creation of Open Medicine as an editorially independent, “gold” open access, general medical journal, built and published with open source software. Palepu and Giustini tag-teamed their way through a brief history of open access in Canada as well as the steps in establishing an OA journal. A unique feature of the presentation was a highlight on the value a librarian can add to an editorial board, enhancing the journal’s impact.

Nazi book burnings

The Tyee recently published a great article, The Urge to Burn Books, on book burnings in Nazi Germany in 1933.

I like how Stan Persky brings this historical event into the present with this comparison:

So, whenever people burn books — whether it’s the ancient library of Alexandria, Egypt going up in flames nearly two millennia in the past, or the 2003 torching of the National Library in Baghdad just five years ago, at the beginning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq — I take offence.

From this article I learned about an exhibition and website at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum titled Fighting the Fires of Hate.

I also learned about Empty Library, Micha Ullman’s art installation in Berlin. Petskey describes the installation:

But there’s an even more effective, permanent reminder of the book burning right in the middle of Bebel Platz. It’s a memorial sculptural installation by Israeli artist Mischa Ullman, but it’s only really noticeable at night. It consists of a small square of glass set in the rough cobblestone surface of the plaza. At night, it emits a shaft of light from underground. When you edge up to it and look down, there’s a white room, and all four walls, from floor to ceiling, are bookshelves. Empty bookshelves. A nearby ground-level plaque quotes Heine’s line about “where they burn books…” and records that this is the site of the book burning in 1933

Thanks Barbara Jo for the link!

Kill the Messenger

BCLA is a community partner with DOXA, documentary film festival in Vancouver for the documentary film Kill the Messenger.

In the wake of September 11, 2001, Sibel Edmonds is approached by the FBI. As an American of Iranian and Turkish origin, Edmonds’ linguistic skill set makes her a valuable asset to the Language Services Unit, where she spends months translating high-security clearance documents. One day shortly after reporting the possible infiltration of her unit by Turkish spies to her supervisors and their supervisors, Edmonds’ world is turned upside-down.

The first person to leave a comment will win two memberships to DOXA and two tickets to the 9pm screening on Saturday May 31st at Pacific Cinematheque in Vancouver.

ALA’s top ten banned books

Photo credit: florian.b on flickr

The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom just published their list of the top ten banned books from last year. I haven’t read Olive’s Ocean or TTYL yet, but if they really are sexually explicit and have offensive language I will probably enjoy them immensely.

1. “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell

Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier

Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3. “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes

Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language

4. “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman

Reason: Religious Viewpoint

5. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain

Reason: Racism

6. “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker

Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language

7. “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle

Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou

Reason: Sexually Explicit

9. “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris

Reasons: Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky

Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

parody+politics=lawsuit from CanWest

Mordecai Briemberg, webmaster/administrator of canpalnet (Canadian-Palestine Support Network), is being sued by CanWest, over a parody of the Vancouver Sun. Here’s a pdf of the first page, and here is the full text of the parody.

There are so many reasons why this lawsuit sucks:

• Briemberg claims he didn’t write the parody, or even distribute it
• He’s being sued for copyright infringement when the issue seems to be actually about politics
• These types of lawsuits have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and opinions that are critical of the stance that the mainstream media have on political issues

At the membership of BCLA passed a resolution at the recent conference to:

• Write a letter asking CanWest to drop the legal action
• Distribute this letter to libraries, media activist and civil liberties communities and also to submit this letter to CanWest to try and get it published
• Support Media Democracy Day 2008
• Work with the Information Policy Committee to educate the BCLA membership and the general community on the impact of media concentration.

Here, dear reader, are some things that you can do:

• Print off the pdf of the parody and post it on your door and on bulletin boards in your neighbourhood
• Attend the free public event CanWest: Media Bully, Wednesday May 14th, 7:30 pm at SFU Harbour Center in Vancouver
• Check out the Seriously Free Speech website, and sign their petition

Edit:  Brimberg stated that he picked some of the parody papers up at the library and handed them out at a bus stop.

Voices Carry: a concert for intellectual freedom

The Vancouver Men’s Chorus is hosting a concert celebrating 25 years of Little Sister’s 25th anniversary and their long fight for intellectual freedom in Canada. The first concert is tonight May 3, 2008 at 8pm at the Commodore Ballroom, 868 Granville Street, Vancouver. They will be taking the show on the road next month with performances in Victoria June 7, Nanaimo June 8 and Kelowna June 28.

If you go to the concert find the little BCLA ad in the program and tell all your concert going friends about librarians, libraries and intellectual freedom.