This past Saturday, September 25th, marked the beginning of Banned Books Week. Established in 1982, Banned Books Week highlights attempts to  remove books from library and store shelves.

Being a law library, we’re interested in Banned Books Week as librarians, and also because there happens to be a lot of case law resulting from efforts to ban books. Removing books from school libraries was the primary focus of Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982). There are also cases about the suppression of specific books,  including James Joyce’s Ulysses, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, and William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch.

The Law Library has a number of books on the First Amendment and book banning, including:

120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature, by Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, & Dawn B. Sova

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, by Anthony Lewis

Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius, by Edward De Grazia

Ulysses in Court: The Litigation Surrounding the First Publication of James Joyce’s Novel in the United States, by Irving Younger & James W. McElhaney

The Georgia State University College of Law Library invites everyone to attend a book discussion and signing for Professor  Natsu Taylor Saito’s new book, Meeting the Enemy: American Exceptionalism and International Law.

The event will be Thursday, Sept. 21st, in the Law Library at 4pm.   Refreshments will be served.

For more information about this event and the book, please refer to Joy Woodson’s article, “Saito’s new book confronts exceptionalism in America.”

The law library welcomed three new librarians on August 9:

• Meg Butler, Associate Director of Public Services
• Deborah Schander, Reference/Student Services Librarian, and
• Austin Williams, Reference/Student Services Librarian

You will find Meg, Deborah and Austin answering questions at the Reference Desk, teaching Legal Bibliography and occasionally visiting other classes as well. All three new librarians are delighted to be at GSU, helping law students, faculty members and other library patrons.