It’s that time of the year when students from high schools all over Surrey get to weigh in on their favourite titles from the year’s selection of novels for Surrey Teens Read. A new voting format has been introduced this year. Every student gets the chance to rate each of the books that she has read. The highest rated novel will win the coveted “Book of the Year” award for Surrey Teens Read.
Go here to rate the books. Let your voice be heard!
Come down to your School Library to join us as we celebrate Poetry Month in Canada this April.
“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
Source: Unknown*
The rights and freedoms of Canadians include the right to read what you want to read. Such rights and freedoms are fundamental to democracy. However, such rights and freedoms are meaningless unless citizens exercise these rights and freedoms.
There are authoritarian forces at work in our society that seek power by attacking your rights, including attempts to censor or limit your freedom to read. Totalitarian states know that uneducated and illiterate citizens are easier to control and oppress. Such forces can only celebrate that the work is much simpler when significant portions of the population choose not to read. Censorship becomes less pressing when “aliteracy” becomes prevalent.
A true democracy guarantees fundamental rights and freedoms to its citizens. But to work effectively, indeed, to survive, democracy requires that citizens exercise those rights. In particular, democracy breaks down if citizens aren’t educated, informed and active.
The rise of powerful new information technology in the last few decades has made it more important than ever that citizens are highly “information literate.” Citizens must not only have access to information, they must have the tools required to wade through increasingly destructive levels of misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and outright lies. Citizens need to have access to information that is credible, accurate and trustworthy.
The rise of anti-intellectualism and anti-science movements, perhaps most recently represented by anti-vax conspiracies, are part of the wider breakdown of democratic institutions. There is little doubt that attacks on public education over many years have reaped some these results and are integral to the rise of authoritarianism.
It is not enough to celebrate the Freedom to Read. As citizens of democratic societies, we have an obligation to exercise our Freedom to Read, in part so that we are equipped to defend our democratic rights and freedoms.
It is clear that democracy is under attack, throughout the world, and in our back yard. We must act.
Find out more:
Note* The above quote, or variations on it, are often popularly attributed to Mark Twain. However the original source of this quote, or its variations, remains unclear.
American scholar and leading civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois was born on this day in 1868. Du Bois was the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University. Du Bois was a great thinker and researcher in many fields, including Sociology and History, and was leading Civil Rights advocate and opponent of Jim Crow throughout his adult life. He was the author of numerous works, including The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Black Reconstruction in America (1935). Du Bois was a founding member of the NAACP in 1910, and its journal, “The Crisis.”
Find out more:
February is Black History Month. Find out more by visiting us in person, or online at tweedsmuirlibrary.ca
From September 2022 to the end of August 2023, Canadian libraries, especially school libraries, faced the highest number of book challenges ever for a 12 month period in Canada (source). The number of official challenge is likely just a small fraction of the challenges that go unreported– ALA studies suggest 82 -97% of challenges go unreported (source).
Intellectual freedom has been a pillar of library philosophy for nearly a century; and in our current climate, it is perhaps our most valuable tool in our efforts to amplify the voices of the most marginalized within our communities.
Michael Nyby
Read the full article, “A Rising Tide of Censorship: Recent Challenges in Canadian Libraries” by Michael Nyby of the CFLA Intellectual Freedom Committee, at Freedomtoread.ca
Canada’s Freedom to Read Week in 2024 is February 18-24.
Do you believe that you should be able to choose what you read? Or should other people be able to decide for you what you can read? Freedom to Read Week celebrates our fundamental freedoms as citizens of democracies and our fundamental rights as human beings. Freedom to Read Week also asks you to stand up for your rights and oppose those who want to take away your freedom to read.
Find out more at freedomtoread.ca
Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American friends, family and neighbours! Along with Turkey and football games, another staple of American Thanksgiving for many is listening to the 18 minute classic, “Alice’s Restaurant.”
November has been Peace month in the School Library, with an emphasis on understanding peace education, the antiwar movements, civil disobedience and other non-violent means of social change. Such themes overlap with American Thanksgiving in “Alice’s Restaurant.”
Originally released in 1967, Arlo Guthrie’s 18 minute long recording of “Alice’s Restaurant” has become on of the most famous protest songs against the Vietnam War. The events described in the song, beginning with a Thanksgiving celebration amongst friends during the sixties, were the inspiration for a film which was released in 1969.
More than 50 years later Guthrie’s signature song is a staple of classic rock radio stations on and around American Thanksgiving.
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November is Peace Month at your School Library. Other “Songs of Peace” in this series:
Other “Songs of Peace” in this series:
Happy Bandi Chhor Divas and Happy Diwali
On Bandi Chhor Divas, Sikhs celebrate Guru Hargobind, the 6th Guru, who was released from prison, along with many other prisoners, in 1619. The name Bandi Chhor Divas means “Liberation of Prisoners Day.” Sikhs in Canada, India and around the world will celebrate this holy day, which coincides with the Indian holiday known as Diwali.
From the BBC:
According to tradition, Guru Hargobind was released from prison in Gwalior and reached Amritsar on Divali. He would only agree to leave prison if 52 Hindu princes who were in prison with him could also go free. The Emperor Jahangir, said that those who clung to the Guru’s coat would be able to go free. This was meant to limit the number of prisoners who could be released. However, Guru Hargobind had a coat made with 52 tassels attached to it so that all of the princes could leave prison with him.
The story reminds Sikhs of freedom and human rights and this is what they celebrate on Bandi Chhor Divas.
Source: BBC
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October is Canadian Library Month and International School Library Month. Today we are highlighting a few noteworthy librarians for the “Library Hall of Fame.”
Gene Joseph
Gene Anne Joseph is the founding librarian of the Xwi7xwa Library, an Indigenous Library at the University of British Columbia. She was the first librarian of Indigenous descent in British Columbia. Gene Joseph is from Hagwilget, British Columbia and is a member of the Wet’suwet’en Nadleh’dena First Nations. (source)
Zenodotus
Zenodotus was the first Librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria. During his leadership of the Great Library, Zenodutus was credited with establishing the first classification systems and other organizational schemes for the library. (source)
Jessamyn West
Jessamyn West is a librarian whose work has had a profound impact in many different ways, including her activism and her pioneering work in library technology. She is the founder of librarian.net and the owner of Meta Filter. West sees her work as a contribution to social justice. In her own words, “my main interest area is the intersection of technology and civic engagement. I believe the digital divide is just one more symptom of an increasing distance between haves and have-nots…” (source)
Find out more:
Jessamyn.com
Librarian.net
X̱wi7x̱wa Library
Gene Joseph Scholarship
Zenodotus of Ephesus
Great Library of Alexandria
Previous Library Hall of Fame Inductees:
Brian Day
Zoia Horn
Nancy Pearl
October is Canadian Library Month
October is International School Library Month
Happy Canadian Library Workers Day to all the students and staff on the Library Team at LTSS, and in the other libraries in our community and around the world. Thank you for all that you do to help with the vital work and joyful experiences of libraries!
Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School Library 