UNC Mirror

Issue date: 10/3/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Robert Flores Pictured above are books available at Michener Library. Monday night professors read "Bless Me Ultima," a book banned from shelves across the nation. Librarians at the University of Northern Colorado strive to have a diverse collection of books available to students, including books that are banned elsewhere.

A group of students, professors and librarians came together to hear excerpts from the book "Bless Me, Ultima," a book that has been pulled from libraries all across the country.

The book reading was sponsored by Weld County Reads; Monday a group supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, created to promote reading. This month Weld County Reads has taken a focus on Spanish culture and has chosen "Bless Me, Ultima," as their book of the month.

The readings were also apart of UNC's Libraries Banned Book Week, a week that focuses on censorship and some of the books that are being attacked for reasons varying from sexual content, to dabbling in the occult.

An excerpt from "Bless Me, Ultima" was read aloud in both Spanish and English, with Professor Don Perl, a professor of Hispanic studies, reading the Spanish selection and Dean Svedlor, a professor of art and design, reading the English selection.

After the reading, Jamie LaRue, the director of the Douglas County Libraries, spoke for about 30 minutes about issues of censorship and intellectual freedom. LaRue first encountered censorship when he tried to check out a book from the book mobile as a boy. At the time book mobiles had a blue line which separated the children's books at the bottom from the adult books at the top and children were not allowed to read books above the line.

"I became a librarian to find out what was over the blue line," LaRue said.

LaRue has worked extensively with the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Colorado Library Association, serving as a co-chairman from 1988 to 1989.

During his tenure with Douglas County Libraries, LaRue has had many attempts for books to be pulled from his library.

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