Y’all know about Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, right? Hapless human Arthur Dent gets dragged all over several universes and time periods after watching Earth get destroyed to make room for a hyperspatial express route. His best friend, Ford Prefect, is an alien with a nearly unpronounceable name who writes planetary travel articles for said Book. The pair wander around, get into trouble, almost die multiple times, murder a whale and a bowl of petunias, steal a spaceship with an Infinite Improbability Drive, and make sandwiches.
Adams came up with the original idea while lying in a field, drunk, staring up at the stars and wondering if anyone had ever written a Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe but for space. As it turns out, no one had, so he did. And it was glorious.
Here’s a tidbit for your next pub quiz: H2G2 was banned at one school in Canada for using the word “whore.” As in Eccentrica Gallumbits, the Triple-Breasted Whore of Eroticon Six. Yep, that’s it. That’s really it. As a person who thrives on controversy and poking the bear in the zoo, I find this rather pathetic. There are so many better reasons to toss a book in literary jail than saying “whore” once in a 250 page book. And of all the words to find offensive, that has got to be the least of them. Why even be bothered by that word? Is it the profession itself that is offensive, or the specific word? I guess I’m mostly disappointed that the reasoning is so lackluster because the book is so important to me. It’s no exaggeration to say the H2G2 5-book trilogy (And Another Thing… doesn’t count) changed my life. There are those few milestones in everyone’s life, and not surprisingly, most of my milestones have involved controversial topics or creators. I can’t talk about H2G2 and Banned Books Week without talking about how influential the books and the author were in my personal evolution. This is about to get long-winded and a bit rambly, so bear with me.
There are five big moments where my life took a left turn, but I’m only going to deal with the three most relevant to the topic at hand. The first time everything changed was with an accidental purchase of Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile when I was 16. Up to that point I only listened to radio-friendly pop, my mother’s favorite gospel radio station, and Christian “rock,” courtesy of my strict religious upbringing. That day, with Trent Reznor’s guidance, I fell in love with music that meant something, music that inspired emotion and reaction. It shattered my entire perception of what music was and what it could do. Nowadays, I’ll listen to just about anything, but strongly prefer music that speaks to my soul, music that sounds like poetry, music that makes something new out of the world.
I’ve written repeatedly during my tenure at Tor.com how Doctor Who (specifically, the barfight/makeout scene in first episode of the second season of Torchwood), coupled with my simultaneously discovered affection for Neil Gaiman (an author who has not actually been banned but who is frequently challenged, and, incidentally enough, who coined the term “H2G2”), pushed me down an SFF path from which I have never looked back. My Torchwood/Doctor Who experience and Neil Gaiman lead me to discover Tor.com in its early-ish days, which lead me to getting hired as a blogger, which brings us to this very post.
In between NIN and Who was a polite, clever, geeky Englishman named Douglas Noel Adams. Adams turned up in my early 20s when I was going through a series of poor life choices. An ex-boyfriend introduced me to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I didn’t read the series until months later when I was trapped on a 7 hour bus ride from London to Newquay with my CDs packed in storage. The first book broke me apart, and the rest of Adams’ oeuvre did it again and again. Up till then I’d only really read the Classics and the Bible, so this was quite the step outside my comfort zone. Adams was one of those writers who seemed to rework the English language into something new and wholly unique. The way he formed jokes, sentences, words, concepts, philosophies, all of it was completely unknown to me. More than unknown; before him I didn’t even know such things were even possible. It was like suddenly discovering purple had a taste. Mind = blown.
I grew up in a heavily religious environment. From 6 to 16 I was part of a fundamentalist branch of Christianity that disallowed questioning the Word of God and demanded total adherence to doctrine. Being the kind of person who dislikes being told what to do and hates hypocrisy, it’s no surprise I had issues with it. I got in trouble once for ordering bacon—verboten!—at Denny’s during a fieldtrip. I dyed my hair and pierced my ears like, well, like whores did, according to my school. In high school I was unceremoniously kicked out of Sabbath School for making the other kids uncomfortable because I asked too many questions and refused to accept “The Lord works in mysterious ways” as a valid answer.
By the time Douglas Adams came into my life, I had already stopped attending church and had veered into vague agnosticism. It was he—plus several college classes in evolutionary theory and paleoanthropology—who pushed me over the edge to full on atheism. (None of this is to say religion is wrong and atheism is right. Jesus, Buddha, Anansi, Frejya, Ch’aska Qoyllur, Xenu, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whatever. I could care less what you believe as long as you’re a decent person.)
My worldview today is almost entirely founded on the principles espoused by Adams. My personal philosophy can basically be summed up with the answer to life, the universe, and everything. I’ll let Bill Bryson explain in his (marvellous) book A Short History of Nearly Everything:
…for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and curiously obliging manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once…Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favoured evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely—make that miraculously—fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years…Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result—eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly—in you.
Douglas Adams taught me that in a simpler, more enjoyably SF way: What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9? 42. Not 54. 54 makes logical sense; 42 doesn’t. It’s a meaningless answer to a meaningless question. He even came up with “42” on a meaningless whim: “42 is a nice number that you can take home and introduce to your family.” The point is that there is no point. You can apply all the logic and rules and order you want, but at the end of the day Adams and I believe you are on this planet out of random happenstance.
For me, believing there’s no one watching out for us is more profound than believing someone is. It’s the difference between doing good because you want daddy to give you a cookie and doing good because it’s the right thing to do. I only get one go-round, and it’s my responsibility as a member of the most intelligent species on this planet to leave it in better shape than when I arrived. I didn’t have to be here, and the fact that I have lasted as long as I have is a testament to the miracle of life rather than because someone up there likes me. Again, I’m not trying to convert or condemn those who believe differently. What works for me may not work for you, but as long as we all follow Wheaton’s Law of Don’t Be A Dick, it’s all good in my book.
This is all a very roundabout way of saying how surprised I was that H2G2 was banned for one measly instance of a barely offensive word rather than its radical philosophical and theological stances. Adams never shied away from his deeply held ideas on evolution and atheism. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy isn’t exactly an evolutionist manifesto or anything, but it is a window to another way of comprehending the world. For me, it was a crack of light in a pitch black basement, something to guide my escape from a life I was never happy in. For others it’s just a damn fine book, entertaining, witty, and funny as all getout. And, for some particularly puritanical Canadians, it’s a profane, debasing, offensive piece of filth that should be stricken from all shelves and burned à la Fahrenheit 451.
Truth be told, that makes me love Douglas Adams even more.
Banned Books Week 2013 is being celebrated from Sept. 22 to the 28; further information on Banned and Frequently Challenged Books is available from the American Library Association.
Alex Brown is an archivist, research librarian, writer, geeknerdloserweirdo, and all-around pop culture obsessive who watches entirely too much TV. Keep up with her every move on Twitter, or get lost in the rabbit warren of ships and fandoms on her Tumblr.
I’m sorry if a country is going to ban The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the use of a single word, that word can only be “Belgium.“
Wow, Canada banned it for 1 word? Glad they got over that, otherwise their whole library systems would be decimated because of 1 word objections in about every book in the world.
But will stay this about 42:
M = 13
A = 1
T = 20
H = 8_
= 42
Quick little clarification: H2G2 wasn’t banned in the entire country, just in a school in Canada. Should’ve been more specific.
@Jonathan: +10 for you!
Being taken off a library shelf, or out of a school, really doesn’t count as ‘banning’. Can’t we reserve Banned Books week for works that suffered actual and serious censorship?
@jeff: Technically speaking, it was banned, albeit from a school in Canada. The ALA also doesn’t distinguish between national bans and local bans: “A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. As such, they are a threat to freedom of speech and choice.” Banned is banned, as far as librarians are concerned.
Another good post Alex. I am glad that you found Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy–every bit of light helps. That’s really what banning does–it turns off lights that someone could have used to illuminate their world.
No, no, no. “Technically speaking”, sure it has been banned. But how can you possibly say it was “banned in Canada”? It wasn’t even “banned in Alberta”.
If either are true, then it’s equally true to say “It was banned on Earth”. Which, in the context of galactic civilization probably makes a lot of sense, and would make Douglas Adams very happy.
It’s almost certainly also equally true that it has been banned in the UK.
Actually Gainman has been banned, specifically the Sandman series according to American Library Association banned books site has been removed many and the Comic Books Legal Defense Fund site says this about Sandman:
The comic series and graphic novel have been challenged and banned in libraries since its publication. Gaiman’s graphic novel has been challenged and removed from some libraries because of “anti-family themes,” “offensive language,” and for being “unsuited for age group.” Most often, opposition to the series has arisen when it has been shelved in the young adult section of the library.
I have to agree with @@.-@ and @6 about the meaning of banned books. The kids at the school which decided not to carry H2G2 still had legal and easy access to the book through their city/county library and through bookstores.
It may be that looking at books that were “banned” on a large scale in North America does not turn up sufficent candidates? In which case, we can celebrate the freedom of expression we have instead of trying to invent cases of censorship.
I always thought Adams had in mind that 6 x 9 = 42 if you count in base 13, fwiw.
@7 Actually, I take it back. There isn’t even any evidence on the web that even one school in Canada ever banned H2G2. There’s just an endless series of articles like this one saying “banned in Canada”, and if they reference anything at all, it’s http://waggingthefox.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/rabid-reads-hitchhikers-guide-to-galaxy.html, which does say that one school banned it, but even he says “that’s what I read on a Canadian library site anyway.” There’s nothing like a healthy does of flagrant rumour-mongoring to brighten a day.
@@@@@ EmmetAOBrien – Adams always denied that. When challenged on it once, I believe his words were something along the lines of “I may be sad, but I’m not sad enough to work out jokes in base 13”.
I was never sure how Adams could be an atheist when he was clearly a minor god himself, or at least in communion with Homer’s “thea” (muse/goddess).
@9:I rather think I was disagreeing with Jeff R@@.-@. Too be more clear, any banning is a bad thing be it small or large.
@auspex: Yes, I realize the statement was vague, hence my later clarification. I also found a lot of secondary and tertiary sources claiming banning in Canada (it wasn’t until later that I found the school reference), but please also keep in mind that a lot of stuff from that long ago is still making its way onto the web. There might not be any original records left, and if there are, they’re probably not digitized.
@Nicholas: Good catch! Missed it on my quick scan of his books.
@bookworm: Again, censorship is censorship is censorship. I don’t think you can argue that one book is “more banned” than another. If it’s banned, it’s banned, no matter the scale. The refusal to allow access to material, regardless of the size or perceived level of importance of the library, is what’s key here. The ALA doesn’t discount books that were only banned once against books that were banned multiple times. I’m coming at this from the perspective of a librarian. Once is more than enough. Even challenged once is too much.
The point of Banned Books Week is to both highlight the erroneous nature of censorship AND to celebrate your freedom to read whatever the hell you want to without someone shaming you for it. For a lot of kids, their school library really is their only access to books. Even if there was a public library right across the street that carried H2G2, the point at hand is that the book was censored. And I’d bet good money it wasn’t the only book that school – whatever Canadian school it was – banned over the years. It’s indicative of a larger problem.
@Emmet: A lot of people think that. That remarkable coincidence that ultimately means nothing even more supports my thesis of unmonitored chaos. Stuff just happens, and sometimes it’s really cool, but in the end it’s just random, cool stuff.
Did you know that HHGTTG was originally written as a radio series (six 30 minute episodes, if I remember correctly), for the BBC? The books (and the dramatisation for tv, again for the BBC) came later on.
@Gary: Yep! I have those early transcripts. They’re excellent.
Update for all. An intrepid Twitterer did some digging and found some info from the Canadian Library Association about them not having any record of it being banned. HOWEVER, they also mention that it might have been challenged, and that they don’t keep a record of those books.
A lot of non-librarians use “banned” and “challenged” interchangeably, so perhaps that’s where the rumors got started.
So for those upset that I wrote a post about a book that was possibly challenged and not banned during Banned Books Week, sorry. But I still think the point stands. People have banned and challenged books for far less than “whore,” and it’s worth remembering to fight the good fight in re censorship. And, if it makes you feel any better, the book was definitely banned from the private Christian church school I attended K-10, so there’s that.
Speaking of whores, I was recently given to wonder if Eccentrica Gallumbits was the inspiration for the ‘novelty’ character at the bar in both the original “Total Recall” movie and the recent remake…
I’ve never read the original short story, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”, on which the movies are based – although the story seems to predate HHGTTG, having been written in 1966, according to Wikipedia.
Thousands of books are removed from library shelves every year. Millions are simply not acquired in the first place. Are these books ‘banned’? Or is the idea of someone asking a library to reconsider an offering so inherently offensive that librarians are required to, out of pure spite, keep any book so mentioned on the shelves unto eternity?
Obviously ‘banned’ in this overbroad and weak sense is not remotely like being banned from marketplaces with the power of the state, burned en masse by groups powerful enough to actually intimated potential readers, or having authors credibly threatened with death or prison, and trying to use it as such trivializes actual censorship.
But where do country wide bans start? The argument that ‘just’ banning a book from a school library ‘doesn’t count’ puts me in mind of Neimoller’s ‘First they came …’
Jazzlet@19:Yep– a particularly slippery slope.
The slippery slope argument is known as a rhetorical fallacy not for nothing, guys.
As a fellow librarian (named Alex), Alex, I love this piece and you!
As a fellow librarian (whose name is even less relevant to the discussion than it was before), I’m flabbergasted by the pushback some Tor readers are giving to the concept of our Banned Books Week. There’s nothing nefarious or spiteful behind it, and I suspect it’s called Banned Books Week because (1) it sounds better than “Challenged Books Week” and (2) many non-librarians use the words interchangeably anyway, as Alex pointed out.
For what it’s worth, I think of it as a week in which we respond to the POTENTIAL banning of books through the process of challenging (which all libraries allow and take seriously in one way or another), challenges based on reasoning that is an affront to intellectual freedom and results in censorship.
And really, who can argue with that?
This is the week where we bring attention to those inappropriate and damaging challenges as a way of helping the public at large understand a bit more about what it is we do as librarains–that is, defend intellectual freedom day in and day out. This week makes me proud I chose to be a librarian.
It’s not about spite. I can tell you that whenever we receive a challenge at my library, we take it seriously. ALA keeps track of challenges in order to map trends and to arm fellow librarians with information about how to deal with challenges locally.
The simple fact, though, is that most challenges end up being without merit. They don’t end up mustering the evidence of harm necessary to bypass one of our guiding principles: “If you don’t want to read something, don’t; but you have no right to decide that for other people.”
I know, earlier commenter, that you cited examples of libraries removing items from their collections as a rhetorical device, but I assure you that collection weeding and selection are done with a great deal of care, overseen by professionals trained in their execution, with all policies relating to them spelled out and publicly available to people in most communities. Even where such policies are not posted, ALA makes professionally-developed guidelines available via simple web searching, so you never need wonder why those precious volumes are exiting your local branch, or why a particular tome is not entering it to begin with. Often, in the former case, it has to do with condition, local interest, and the currency of the information contained therein. In the latter case it’s often due to, again, local interest, cross-referenced againt space and budget. So I gues the moral of the story is, “Support libraries so they can buy you more books.” (And even if they can’t, you can interlibrary loan most anything and no one will try to stop you.)
Thank you for this! :) I’ve written quite a few of these ‘whaaaaaaa he changed myyyliiifee’ type of blogposts about DNA myself. And it’s so heartening bits of your inner universe reflected somewhere far far away in time and space.
Jeff R.@21:It is only a fallacy if there is no logical connection amoung the events.
But, in this case, we don’t need to procede down the slope at all. I’ll just state that any time someone in a position of power prevents someone else from reading a book that counts as a banning.
I had access to more than the ordinary number of books in our public library (a nice library in a town of about 4000 in Iowa) thanks to the willingness of the librarians to order inter-library books for me once I had gone through all of the SF in the local library. So, I am very happy to support and encourage librarians to support and encourage their patrons.
stevenhalter@24: By that definition, there hasn’t been a book banned in the US or Canada in decades. I mean, there is a very meaningful distinction between preventing someone from reading something and declining to facilitate it (or, even more attenuated, attempting to persuade someone else to decline to facilitate it), and you have to go back a long way to find a book that couldn’t be, you know, bought at a store if the local libraries didn’t have it.
Well, except in the sense that under said definition taken literally most parents are nefarious censors and enemies of freedom.
The only answer is to go to the ultimate authoritarian. In this case, the Daleks:
Steve Halter @stevenhalter @DalekAdvice Since this is banned books week, what do Daleks think about book banning? – 24 Sep
Dalek Advice @DalekAdvice @stevenhalter BANNING BOOKS IS FOR THE INFERIOR SPECIES. A SUPERIOR DALEK CANNOT BE THREATENED BY A BOOK.
@decgem: Coulnd’t have said it better myself. Thanks, fellow Alex/Librarian :)
There’s a lovely quote from the most recent series of Doctor Who that this article made me think of, and that I’m sure the almighty DNA would approve of:
Hey. Do you mind if I tell you a story? One you might not have heard. All the elements in your body were forged many many millions of years ago in the heart of a faraway star that exploded and died. That explosion scattered those elements across the desolations of deep space. After so, so many millions of years, these elements came together to form new stars and new planets. And on and on it went. The elements came together and burst apart, forming shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings. Until, eventually, they came together to make you. You are unique in the universe. There is only one [you]. And there will never be another.
@19 “But where do country wide bans start? The argument that ‘just’ banning a book from a school library ‘doesn’t count’ puts me in mind of Neimoller’s ‘First they came …’”
Sure, but that doesn’t alter the fact that at no time did Canada (or, afaict, any country) ban the book. And since Alex began with that premise, it kind of lets down the whole argument and becomes just another chance to talk about an awesome series of novels.
auspex@29:Alex’s openning comment on banning is “H2G2 was banned at one school in Canada”. Nothing about whole countrys. As for the rest, well just go back and read decgem@22. Repeat until finished.
Another public librarian who thoroughly agrees with decgem@22. No library can possibly purchase every book that has been published, not even the Library of Congress (the closest thing we have to a national library). So each public and school library has to decide what books best serve their community, taking into account reviews, how factual the book is, how well written, etc. I wouldn’t equate this kind of selection with censorship, because that implies we could purchase everything if we wanted to. If a public library knew its community was extremely conservative, for example, Madonna’s “Sex” book probably would not be purchased (which shows how long I’ve been in libraries — that was the big to-do when I was in library school). Was that censorship, or was that knowing one’s community well and not wasting money on a book that wouldn’t be read?
Censorship is more of, “I don’t like this so I don’t think anyone else should be allowed to see it.” My impression is that censors don’t always think about how easy it would be for someone to obtain that book in other ways. And the existence of Amazon and ebooks makes it even easier. However, censor-wannabes may still take issue with public money being used to pay for something they disapprove of.
Censorship also implies that one person/group has the right to tell other people/adults what they can and cannot read. Libraries cannot purchase every book available, but with interlibrary loan we can request a book from anywhere if one of our patrons wants to read it. If libraries were truly censors, we would refuse to order anything from another library, insisting that what we selected for our patrons to read is the only appropriate material for our patrons to read.
In this age of ebooks, restricting people’s access to books, whether they are available locally or not, has become more difficult for censors. But Banned Books Week is still important, because at least once a year people are challenged to consider why some people feel censorship is necessary in the first place. At least, that’s this librarian’s opinion of the week.
The point I was making was that country wide bans start with small local bans, no one has suggested in this thread that any country has banned H2G2, but that unchallenged local bans can lead to bigger more dangerous things. The price of democracy is vigilance, not just against foreign threats, but also against the tendency to want to limit the freedoms of those in our society who don’t fit with the prevailing norms. This is not something that most Science Fiction fans are unfamiliar with.
caffeinated: What you said is dead on. I think a lot of non-librarians seem to be mis-interpreting censorship and banning as something obvious, something major, something national, when it can be as small as a parent demanding a school library remove The Night Kitchen from its shelf because they don’t want ANYONE’S KID to have access to it for reasons they have decided supercede the library’s own collections management policy. Banned Books Week isn’t about nationally banned books (and I don’t think the US even has any of those), but any kind of banning or challenging. It’s more than not wanting to read something, it’s not wanting anyone to read it ever because of your own arbitrary reasons.
Thanks caffeinated and Ales for clear outlines of the point of Banned Books Week.
Forgot to add, I’ve always loved HHGTTG, which was the lure for me to read this article. And the way Alex chose to point out what was objected to, as compared to what COULD be objected to, sounded so much like something DNA might have said I couldn’t help but laugh. Good job!
@31 – I think the problem people who have with way “ban” is being used here seems to be the sense that the banned list is the ALA taking offense to people in the community daring to question their librarian’s judgment of what kind of books deserve to grace the limited shelf space. For intsnace, with the Guide, what age children does the school serve? Perhaps the people requesting it being removed felt “whore” was age inappropriate if the school was for younger children. We don’t know. Which I think is why people think characterizing all of these “bans” as unconscionable actions rather than disagreements as to what comprises quality literature is unnecessary hyperbole.
@Crusader: I wrote this whole long response, and then decided to delete it and just leave you with this.
But Alex that doesn’t count because it’s only a school library and anyway the ban was lifted and the kids could get the book at the local bookstore … *application of lowest form of humour*
@Crusader, I do understand that some people think “Banned Books Week” is hyperbole. I go back to my statement about asking why people feel a need to remove a book from a shelf so that no one else can see it. Because it isn’t just “I don’t want to read this book”, requesting a book be removed is “I don’t want anyone else to read this book.” Personally, I don’t like someone else telling me what I can and cannot read, nor would I want another parent determining what my child can or cannot read (if I had kids).
The best illustration of Banned Books Week I’ve ever seen was a week-long story arc from “Unshelved”, a daily web comic about life in a public library. Start here, and read through the rest of the week:
http://www.unshelved.com/2003-9-23
@caffeinated: UNSHELVED! Yes! The webcomic every librarian is madly in love with.
I know I’m massively late to this discussion, but I was wondering, did you happen to grow up Seventh Day Adventist? The thing about bacon and Sabbath School… I grew up Adventist as well, and didn’t find it to be terribly stifling or restricting, but I think I was lucky – there’s an amazingly variable range of humantist to fanatic in the Adventist world.
@30. Puh-lease! Alex’s quote DIDN’T say “banned at one school in Canada” when she made this post. It was edited later due to complaints (mine included). But the WHOLE point of this post was based on the premise that it had been banned, and if you’re going to claim that this book was banned because it happened in one school in one country, then there’s nothing to make this book any different from millions of others: as I said, just an excuse to talk about H2G2.
@April: Yep. It’s varies depending on where you are and who your church leaders are, of course. There were some great people, and some terrible ones. The church I grew up with was totally cool with LGBTQ* and abortion, but the church that funded the school I went to hated both those things. And that was all in the same county. I think there’s also a reason when we leave the church we turn “Badventist”…
@42:Please continue reading @22, @31 and @32. Repeat until enlightenment ensues.
Well grats on getting out, and sorry it was so rough for you. I’m lucky that we only had a sprinkling of the evil fanatics in our school, and everybody kind of smirked at them and rolled their eyes, so none of the kids felt obligated to take them seriously. Made for a much less dramatic exit from the church (meandering towards agnosticism rather than rebelling against evil and crazy). I watched kids from less kindly congregations and families implode terribly, which was doubly awful because there really isn’t anything official in church cannon to back up that kind of emotional abuse. Anyway, best of luck!
@46 Please refrain from personal disrespect of other commenters. Let’s keep the conversation civil, and focus on the content of the article. Thanks!
For research purpose I need to know which school in Canada banned The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and if there is any official or semi-official announcement. I great appreciate any information to be sent directly to my e-mail address. Many thanks.
Mon Yin Lung
University of Houston O’Quinn Law Library
@Mon Yin Lung: I don’t know off the top of my head, and don’t keep notes from posts a year and a half old. I’m sure I found it doing a Google search, though. The research librarian at your university can help you do the search if you can’t find the information yourself.
Thank you for your reply. Our research team (including myself) have already exhausted all authenticable possibilities (including the ALA site) before I posted my request to your blog. Thank you just the same.
@Mon Yin Lung: Well, I certianly didn’t have any primary sources on that mention. I don’t even know that a school would keep those resources that long. 7 years is usually the max for official docs (my high school, for example, disposed of my transcripts ages ago because I graudated in 2001). At this point, the ban probably exists solely as a line on a few blogs.