Date: Sep 22, 2007

SHINING A LIGHT ON BANNED BOOKS

Hofstra University Library marks 25th anniversary of national campaign for intellectual freedom

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY - Students, faculty and community residents will read from books that have been challenged or banned from libraries and schools as part of a nationwide celebration of intellectual freedom known as Banned Book Week.

The readings will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 27, from 11:15 a.m. to 12:40 p.m. on the ninth floor of the Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, South Campus.

The annual event, co-sponsored by the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom and the Hofstra University Library, this year celebrates 25 years of fighting to keep books freely accessible in U.S.schools and libraries.

"Librarians, as a profession, have always stood for intellectual freedom and against censorship in its many forms," said Daniel Rubey, Hofstra's dean of Library and Information Services. "Banned Books Week offers the Hofstra University Library an opportunity to recognize those efforts to keep information in any format freely available, and to affirm the freedom of inquiry and expression which is at the heart of the academic experience at Hofstra University."

According to the American Library Association, Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read, began in 1982 and "reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted."

Among the most frequently challenged books listed by the Association are such well known works as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Color Purple by Alice Walker and the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.