Local library seeking community help

Debrorha Merrick, branch head of the Merritt Library, says she wants people to stop her from burning books during “Freedom to Read Week.”

Phil Woolgar/Herald

Share this story

Tweet

• Local contributes to Dominican community centre
• Healthy Community
• Library serves as gathering place
• Competition cooks up community
• Local man defined by hockey
• Building communities with food in mind

The Merritt Library will burn books during “Freedom to Read Week” if they don’t have the help of the community.

Deborha Merrick, branch head, is placing a heap of literature over firewood and she encourages people to take a book and put it into the do-not-burn pile between Feb. 26 and March 3.

“We might be having a bonfire,” she said. “Please help me to not burn the books.”

The pile is meant to represent books that have been banned in the past, but have since been placed back onto library and bookstore shelves.

“People will pan through the books that we have set aside to burn and then save their choice from the fire,” she said. “If not, we are having ourselves a bonfire.”

Merrick said her library has never banned a book, but she did have an unusual request after a police officer entered her library and asked that “Women on Top” be banned from the library. The book outlined what the author, Nancy Friday, says are women’s secret fantasies.

However, in order to ban a book, the police officer would need a court order.

“He just heard something on the radio and decided to come in and ask for the book to be removed,” she said.

Other examples of banned books include “Little Women,” “Little House on the Prairie,” “Catcher in the Rye,” “The Holy Bible” and “Harry Potter.”

The Thompson-Nicola Regional District Library System is taking a different angle at many of their libraries, inviting people to “Guess the Banned Book” during Freedom to Read Week.

The week, which is nationally recognized, is meant to encourage people to affirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, a human right guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom.

“The Guess the Banned Book contest is a way for us to showcase our freedoms as a reader,” said Erika Einarson, TNRD library system reference librarian. “Many crucial pieces of literature have at one time been banned from being read by the public.”

Anyone can come into one of the participating libraries on any day in February and read clues to guess the banned book.

Participants can then fill out an entry form with the title of the book they guessed. A winner will then be chosen from each branch.