Analyzing Context

Who, What, When, Where, Why, How?

Dumas, Robert "The Adventure of Captain Underpants - Banned Books Week 2010 Flyer" (9/21/2010) via Flickr
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Creative Commons License

In this post, I will be reading the context of my public debate / controversy. To do so, I will answer questions important to understanding the context of this issue.

What are the key perspectives or schools of thought on the debate that you are studying?

• Banning books is wrong and / or should be combated by libraries
• Banning books is fine and / or should be left alone by libraries

What are the major points of contention or major disagreements among these perspectives?

• Is it the library's place to get involved in this process?
• Should libraries supply banned books / censored material?
• Are books banned or challenged for good, concrete reasons?

What are the possible points of agreement, or the possible common ground between these perspectives?

• Book banning and censorship limits information access for individuals

What are the ideological differences, if any, between the perspectives?

• Those who see banning as something that needs to be combated tend to emphasize the importance of information diversity and public access
• Those who see banning as something the library shouldn't deal with tend to emphasize separation of church and state, books are banned for reasons of merit, and proper context of information / materials

What specific actions do their perspectives or texts ask their audience to take?

• Those who favor library intervention tend to ask readers to read banned books to see what they're missing, imagine what important or formative information may be concealed from people if libraries weren't involved, and spread the word about library initiatives to combat censorship.
• Those who oppose library intervention ten to ask readers to read banned books to understand why they may have been banned in certain contexts, imagine what could happen if a risque or potentially inappropriate material was used in the wrong context, and spread the word about the reason and context of book banning.

What perspectives are useful in supporting your own arguments about the issue? Why did you choose these?

• I agree with the perspective that libraries should intervene in book banning
• Freedom of information is crucial to democracy, equality, and awareness of the world

What perspectives do you think will be the greatest threat to your argument? Why so?

• The perception of importance of context is also a very important value to librarians as well as patrons and is a very strong argument against open access.
• I may have to judge which is more important or turn the library's role into a way of re-defining context...

Reflection: After reading Addie and Ann's analyses of context, I was happy to notice that they had awesome, timely controversies. Mine may be a bit out-dated and in the background, but it's still going on and there's still debate, so I think my paper might play the role of bringing this controversy back into the spotlight.... hopefully. Their posts made me realize that the issue / perspective I can take on this controversy should include commentary about how we've been turning a blind eye to it for years, assuming it's solved by programs already in place while it still occurs. Perhaps I could go as far as introducing potential library programs to combat the issue?