By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
From the first of the year through Aug. 31, the American Library Association reports 414 attempts to censor library materials and services in libraries across the United States, with 1,128 unique titles targeted for censorship. Like other libraries across the nation, the Great Bend Public Library is celebrating Banned Books Week from Sept. 22-28. Director Maribeth Shafer said the week is a celebration of the First Amendment.
"Our Founding Fathers wanted to make sure everybody had a right to the information they need," she said. "We try to have a collection that supports our community and is information that our community is looking for. We also try to make sure we represent all views. We're not trying to pick sides. We're just trying to provide information for the people when they need it."
Shafer said the Great Bend library has had no challenges recently, but there is a protocol in place should a title or service be questioned. The first step is addressing the complaint with an employee.
"If it goes beyond that, there's a form they fill out," Shafer said. "It asks them the title, what they found concerning or what they objected to. We ask if they read the item or watched the item in its entirety. We require the person to be a card-holding member of the library to submit a request, and we only deal with one request at a time. That way, we can give it our full attention and due process."
In an American Library Association survey of voters and public school parents, 71 percent of respondents across all political parties opposed removing books from libraries. Everything from the dictionary to Anne Frank's diary to E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web" have been banned somewhere. In 2006, "Charlotte's Web" was banned by an unnamed Kansas school district because the talking animals were deemed blasphemous.