Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library faculty debated and discussed the topic of banned books at the Censorship Conversation Seminar on Tuesday.
Estella Inda, research services and social sciences librarian and organizer of Banned Books Week, said the Censorship Conversation seminar is a collaborative panel of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. librarians and librarians from San José Public Libraries talking about censorship in K-12 schools through the banning of books.
The Censorship Conversation is one of the many events part of Banned Books Week at San José State.
Inda said banned books events are done annually at the library and she wanted to make sure something significant was done this year.
“I think celebrating banned books week this year alone is so important with book bannings becoming more prevalent and being out in the media a lot more,” Inda said.
Nick Szydlowski, digital scholarship librarian at MLK Library, said librarians in other states are being vilified for trying to provide access to information through books.
He said it’s important that Banned Books Week occurs annually because resistance to content put in books ebbs and flows.
“There are a lot of attacks on curriculums in K-12 education, a lot of attacks on library books. So it's important to keep the event going,” Szydlowski said.
Tiffany Bradford-Oldham, senior librarian for San José Public Library, said the Censorship Conversation Seminar and discussing how books are being banned is a small part of a bigger picture concerning censorship and access to materials.
She said accessibility to information is an ongoing conversation in the larger question of.
“We should even go as far as to think about what works are being oppressed,” Bradford-Oldham said.
Elizabeth Barragan, librarian for San José Public Library said all people should be represented in different books and banning them is only taking that representation away.
“We live in a melting pot, especially here in San José we have such a diverse community,” Barragan said. “It's so important for everybody's voice to be heard and to be represented in the materials that we have within our shelves,” Barragan said.
Almost 1,500 books dealing with themes of sexuality, physical abuse, or health and well-being, were banned between 2022 and 2023, according to a website from Poets, Essayists and Novelists (PEN) America, a program dedicated to protecting free expression in the US.
Christa Bailey, academic librarian at MLK Library, said having the ability to individually select what you do and don’t want to read should be a personal liberty.
“For someone like me who didn't come from a really wealthy background, the library provided me the opportunity to access resources I wouldn't have had otherwise,” Bailey said.
Bradford-Oldham said when she was growing up, the book, “The Color Purple,” was a controversial book that many authority figures in her life deemed inappropriate or questionable.
She said the book itself contained some difficult topics like brutality, rape and homosexuality, but it was important to her because it had cultural relevance.
Bradford-Oldham said she connected with the main character who was religious and wrote letters to God, just like she did.
“Growing up for me, there was always a clear understanding that there's only one place in the world you can be free and that is within your own mind,” Bradford-Oldham said.
Inda said that being understanding of all diverse viewpoints in books is what can help people consider why banning books is bad.
“I encourage people to read as they choose and explain and share and know that there's going to be many different views,” Inda said.
