Censorship and the web

The internet is probably a place where people can feel the most free to speak their minds and put new ideas out there for everyone to see. Which makes filtering software sort of an irony.

But there are factions on both sides of the censorship of books struggle using the web to promote their cause. So here's a website of each.

National Coalition Against Censorship. (2008). NCAC - National Coalition Against
Censorship. Retrieved 11/4/2008 from http://www.ncac.org/home.cfm.

This site represents the cooperation of fifty organizations, and arranges reports of censorship in their focused areas of art, media, literature, science, internet, education, and entertainment, as well as a large selection of subdivisions. There are resources for dealing with challenges, advocacy, and education, as well as events in support of their cause. This site provides a great number of resources, is very well organized, and frequently updated.


Parents Against Bad Books in Schools. (2008). Controversial and challenged books in schools -
PABBIS. Retrieved 11/4/2008 from http://www.pabbis.com/.

This site based out of Virginia aims at alerting people to objectionable content in books being read in schools. Along with numerous passages out of context, it also has links to various reviews of books, and what is and is not said about them. There are resources concerning Virginia's laws on what can be done to challenge books, how to report "bad books", and ideas for challenging books and attempting to "change the system." This site, while it does raise awareness if a parent is wondering about the content of a book, can misrepresent the snippets taken out of context and could cause misleading perceptions of literature.

and just to throw this one in for good measure:

American Library Association, (2008). American Library Association: Banned Books Week. Retrieved 11/4/2008 from http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.cfm.

This is a website for the celebration of increasing awareness to book challenges in the U.S. There are resources for statistics on frequently challenged books and authors. It also links to the official organization's site (www.bannedbooksweek.org), which provides links about pro-and anti-censorship sites, and encourages reporting of challenges. This is an interesting resource that is somewhat obligatory to this topic, since Banned Books Week is often talked about and has been observed for twenty-seven years.