LISNews: Librarian News

Follow-up blog entry at Comicbook.com to this story.

After watching the news story on Omaha’s KETV Channel 7 website, I did some research into the title of the book, since it’s never mentioned but the cover appears on air. The graphic novel is Spider-man Volume 2: Revelations. Written by J. Michael Straczynski, with luscious curves provided by John Romita, Jr., Revelations was published in 2002 in hardback. Both Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and the Marvel Comics website do not list the book as having been published within the last 6 years, so I don’t know why the book was reported as being new, other than the fact that it was apparently new to that library’s collection.

Now here’s where the school district might have dropped the ball in a big time way. On the copies I have been able to find, the book says in big white letters “Rated PG, Ages 12+.” This book would have been fine in middle or high school, just not in the hands of a 6-year old! Whoever reviewed this book didn’t do their job. Mrs. Svendsen has a right to complain.

Full blog entry here.

First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, posted to his group blog The Volokh Conspiracy about an attempt by the Australian government to ban an anti-abortion website. Professor Volokh also links to the site of Mike Meloni, who has been featured in the past couple months on LISTen, who also speaks to the matter.

Recent challenges to West Bend Public Library's (West Bend, WI) selection of materials for the children's and young adult collections.

http://www.fox6now.com/news/witi-090303-west-bend-library,0,296647.story

David Lee King helped created a trend on Twitter today with tweets over a book restriction action by his employer. Four books were proposed to be restricted from access by children: Sex for Busy People, The Lesbian Kama Sutra, The Joy of Sex and The Joy of Gay Sex. Local station KTKA has more. A quick scrape in Google News led to a letter to the editor of the Topeka Capital-Journal against the restrictions.