News Report #4

“Ban Violent Books from Prison Libraries, Urges Connecticut State Senator”

By: Beverly Goldberg, American Libraries US and World News

<http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/10122010/ban-violent-books-prison-libraries-urges-connecticut-state-senator?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AmericanLibrariesMagazine+%28American+Libraries+Magazine+Top+News%29>

John Kissel, the Senator for Connecticut, is trying to pass a new policy where all graphically violent books will be removed from libraries in prison. Kissel hopes to enact this new policy due to the claim that inmates may read these books, since they have nothing else to do, and use the graphically, violent material to carry out other crimes. Kissel is hoping to pass this policy without legislation. Even if this policy is not enacted, the prison department hopes to revise the libraries “to meet the educational, informational, and recreational needs of the inmates”. There are many individuals who oppose the banning of violent books in prisons because they believe that it takes more than words in a book to influence individual’s to commit crimes. To take the censorship of books a step further, the article also states how a prison in South Carolina has prohibited all books from inmates except for a Bible.

I am normally an extreme advocate against banning books. In this case, I am torn between both prison situations: I believe that inmates should have access to the Bible and other reading materials, if they choose, but I do believe that graphically violent material should be censored from them in prison. Like giving a drug to an incarcerated drug addict or giving a seductive photo of a child to an incarcerated molester, it seems that giving violent, criminal material to a violent criminal would only “fuel the fire”. More research should definitely be conducted to see if the access or lack of access to violent reading material, in prisons, actually has an effect on the inmates exposed to it.

Reading Report # 4

“The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google”

by: Steven J. Bell

When it comes to research papers, students find internet search engines, like Google, to be a lot more user-friendly than library databases. Unfortunately, internet search engines provide a wide array of irrelevant information which the article refers to as “infobesity”. Library databases prevent all of the irrelevant information by only providing “nutritious” information on topics. Unfortunately, many students lack the ability to use a database properly. This article stresses that teachers, libraries, and database creators should work together to help boost the popularity, knowledge, and usage of library databases amongst students. Many creators are making their databases more user-friendly and they are adding additional services to increase the popularity of their sites, such as citation creators. Also, teachers and librarians can increase the usage of databases by offering tutorials and by requiring that assignments be completed with the use of databases instead of internet search engines. Another initiative to increase the use of databases is the “RedLightGreen” project where databases provide the same, simple search options as internet search engines. 

I definitely believe that databases should be re-evaluated so they will be more user-friendly for students. My college library has recently re-formatted their database access website and though the databases are helpful in narrowing a search topic, it still requires several steps to navigate to the actual article. If database access was more user-friendly and faster to navigate through, I do believe that more students would be able to access the proper sources they need. Not only would this make life easier for students but it would also make teachers more pleased because students would not be using irrelevant, unacademic sources in their assignments.