October is:
Adopt-A-Shelter Dog Month
To promote the adoption of dogs from local shelters, the ASPCA sponsors this important observance. “Make Pet Adoption Your First Option” – a message in an effort to end the euthanasia of all adoptable animals. Come check out our library’s various collections on Dogs and their care and possibly make a new friend as well.
Every year during Banned Books Week I get asked specifics about what books have been banned and who has banned them. Many times books we now think of as classics were banned by school systems or even public libraries in the past. For example, one of my personal favorites, “To Kill A Mockingbird” has been challenged and taken off the shelves of school libraries when parents didn’t like the language used in the novel.
Although books rarely get “banned” in libraries today, Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read and reminds us of the importance of intellectual freedom. Basically intellectual freedom means that everyone should have the right to access and express ideas, even if the ideas are unpopular.
This idea comes through in this year’s theme for Banned Books Week:Â Think for Yourself and Let Others Do the Same.
Stop by the library to browse our collection of challenged books or pick up a Banned Books Week pin.
Celebrate your freedom to read this week during Banned Books Week. Pick up a button, read a book, show your support! 
The Sept. 20, 2010 issue of Maclean’s Magazine (a Canadian newsweekly, much like Time or Newsweek) offers us an article entitled “Third World America: Collapsing bridges, street lights turned off…:the decline of a superpower.”
Do you you agree or disagree with that sentiment?
A pull-quote from the article:
A pared-down police force, how can people be safe, a county judge was asked: “Arm yourselves.”
So, is this the unvarnished truth or merely scare tactics? What do you think? Where are we headed as a country, economically- and culturally-speaking?
So, would YOU enjoy using a library that classifies its books according to Netflix categories instead of a ‘normal’ library classification system like Dewey or Library of Congress?
“There has definitely been some healthy debate as to where some of our books will now live,†said Poleman, recounting a particularly heated debate about whether Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights belonged in the “Romantic Comedy†or “Cerebral Drama†section.
(found via what’s in rebecca’s pocket?)