I Am Collingswood

I Am Collingswood: Dot Garabedian

Dot Garabedian has overseen the children's collection at Collingswood Public Library for more than 16 years, building a solid collection of reading materials for the next generation.

Dot Garabedian, youth services director at Collingswood Public Library, describes herself as a "cheerleader for reading and literacy." She credits Collingswood with making it easier to reach out to young readers by supporting the library and its activities. Collingswood Patch: How long have you been with Collingswood library? What are your duties as youth services coordinator? Dot Garabedian: I've been full-time in children's and youth services for 16 years. Before that, I was part-time, I did circulation. My duties? Story times, ordering all the books and doing collection development. We're the cheerleaders for reading and literacy, that's our main goal. Patch: What do you think of the popularity of electronic devices, such as the Kindle…

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Celebrating Intellectual Freedom: Banned Books Week

As we approach the Book Festival, Collingswood also observes Banned Books Week—a national reminder that the battle against censorship must be vigilantly contested.

  It's no coincidence that the Collingswood Book Festival is anchored by Banned Books Week, a national week of awareness about the real and ongoing problem of censorship in the literary world. Since the first Banned Books week in 1982, more than 11,000 titles have been challenged, which means someone has attempted to have them removed from circulation in a public or school library based on personal objections to their contents. The issue with challenges, says the American Library Association (ALA), is that although the vast majority are initiated locally by protective parents, the efforts to remove books from circulation affects access to such materials for an entire community of readers. In the classroom What may seem weirder still is the…

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Matt Skoufalos

2:41 pm on Thursday, October 4, 2012

If you haven't seen, this is an excellent follow-up: http://www.flavorwire.com/333790/famous-authors-funniest-responses-to-their-books-being-banned?all=1   more ›