From Madonna's Sex to Lady Chatterley: inside the Bodleian's explicit book club

Created at the height of Victorian prudishness, the Bodleian Library’s Phi collection was designed to protect young minds from ‘immoral’ books. More than a century later, they’re going on display for the first timeLibraries today take a dim view of censorship. They are places where knowledge is preserved and shared freely, and where ideas that may seem challenging to some, are nevertheless part of what libraries see as their role in society to make ideas accessible to all.But this was not always the case. My own institution, the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, created a restricted class, a special category for books that were deemed to be too sexually explicit. These books were given the shelfmark Φ – the Greek letter phi – and students had to submit a college tutor’s letter of support in order to access the racy materials that were contained there. The Bodleian was certainly not alone in this approach to risqué books: one of my first jobs as a curator was in the National Library of Scotland, and the equivalent shelfmark there was frequently the target of break-ins which must have been perpetrated by library staff. (It is a closed-stack institution and only the librarians knew where such good stuff was kept.) Related: The trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2018-11-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with: #shared freely #national library #library staff #good stuff

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From Madonna's Sex to Lady Chatterley: inside the Bodleian's explicit book club

Created at the height of Victorian prudishness, the Bodleian Library’s Phi collection was designed to protect young minds from ‘immoral’ books. More than a century later, they’re going on display for the first timeLibraries today take a dim view of censorship. They are places where knowledge is... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2018-11-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #shared freely #national library #library staff #good stuff


WIRED Book Club: Sex Criminals Titillates and Teases Us

In Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky's comic series, Suzie and Jon can stop time by having orgasms. And that's just the beginning. The post WIRED Book Club: Sex Criminals Titillates and Teases Us appeared first on WIRED. Continue reading at Wired

[ Wired | 2016-11-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Audio Book Club Hangs With All the Single Ladies

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[ Slate | 2016-07-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A Book Club Book Club

You certainly don’t have to be a Fifty Shades of Grey fan to enjoy Book Club, the new romantic comedy that stars Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen. But the movie, in which four women’s lives are forever changed by reading E.L. James’ infamous series, is bound to... Continue reading at Slate

[ Slate | 2018-05-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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DPLA Launches ‘Geo-targeted’ Banned Book Club via Palace E-book App

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[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-07-20 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Texas Officially Bans So-Called “Sexually Explicit” Books; Demands Book Ratings from Vendors

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[ Book Riot | 2023-06-15 10:40:00 UTC ]
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[ The Atlantic | 2022-09-13 13:55:00 UTC ]
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