Freedom to Read Week Opportunities

There are a lot of events and opportunities coming up to get involved with FLIF. If you missed today's meeting here are some of our upcoming projects:

Freedom to Read week is February 22nd - 28th. We have events taking place both on and off campus and are looking for volunteers as well as book donations.

FLIF is partnering with the CLA student chapter and will be manning a display of banned books and clever librarian buttons in HUB during Freedom to Read Week.
We are looking for volunteers to take two hour shifts at the information table. This is a great opportunity to get involved (with just a little time commitment). It is a really relaxed and fun way to interact with the students and staff on campus and promote both Freedom to Read week and SLIS in general.
If you are interested in volunteering for Freedom to Read Week please send an email to flifblog@gmail.com

FLIF is also collecting book donations for two projects for Freedom to Read Week.
We are looking for loaned books that have been challenged for the table display in HUB (YOU WILL GET YOUR BOOKS BACK! Please put your name and/or email address inside the cover of any donated books so that we can return them to you.
You can find a list of commonly challenged books here: Freedom to Read - Challenged Books and Magazines and here
American Library Association Frequently Challenged Books

In addition, this year we are going to spread our freedom to read message off campus by participating in a BookCrossing enabled stealthy distribution of reading material across the city. Bookcrossing is an online system that allows you to release books into the wild and track their travels. We will be leaving books with information about Freedom to Read Week and BookCrossing around the city. If you have books you would like to donate to this project (any kind of books!) there will be a labelled box in the SLIS lounge on campus or you can send us an email to arrange a pick up at flifblog@gmail.com

There are also events taking place off campus during Freedom to Read week. Check out the EPL Banned Books Cafe that will be taking place at the Stanley Milner and Whitemud branches. Volunteers will be reading from challenged books.


Outside of Freedom to Read Week FLIF is involved with helping APIRG (Alberta Public Interest Research Group) catalogue their library. Their office is located in HUB and cataloguing takes place on Wednesdays from 5pm - 7pm. This is a very flexible project and if you would like to stop in for a little (or a long) time, learn about their collection, drink some tea and do some cataloguing send us an email at flifblog@gmail.com

FLIF is also pleased to announce that we are taking over the Community Bookshelf Project from GELA and are in need of interested volunteers to help maintain and extend this program. Community Bookshelf provides books to various community organizations and sets up a table of free books at Homeless Connect twice a year (in October and May). This project would involve picking up books from EPL and delivering them to various locations in the city once per month. We are interested in acquiring book donations so if you have a library connection or know of someone who is getting rid of some reading material please let us know! GELA would also like someone from FLIF to sit in on their meetings and keep them up to date on the program activities. Meetings are monthly, generally during a weekday evening. If you are interested in participating in the Community Bookshelf project please send us an email at flifblog@gmail.com

Finally the new co-chairs who will be happily continuing FLIF projects into the next academic year are Jordan and Shannon. If you have any questions or would like to get involved but aren't sure just which of these great opportunities to volunteer for please feel free to ask!

See you all at Freedom to Read Week!




*Freedom to Read poster from the Pelham Library Blog http://pelhamlibrary.blogspot.com/