Twilight. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Brave New World.

These are few of many books that people have challenged over the past year in schools and local libraries. This week, the Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., in collaboration with the community and the UI, will celebrate Banned Books Week to kick off its Intellectual Freedom Festival, which continues through October.

The festival was established in 1995 in honor of Carol Spaziani, a Public Library staff member whose 26-year career was dedicated to addressing intellectual freedom.

“Intellectual freedom is the most basic human right,” said Kara Logsden, the Public Library’s adult-services coordinator and head of the festival’s planning committee. “What it all digests down to — and how the [American Library Association] sees it — is that it is basic to a democracy, and the festival recognizes the role that libraries play in ensuring our democracy.”

Logsden, who has been involved with the festival for 10 years, stressed the importance of self-government and the library’s role by helping to maintain a well-read public.

“You have to be well-informed,” she said. “One of the roles of a library is to provide information and resources in many formats that are accessible to the community. We are enabling an informed citizenry.”

The Intellectual Freedom Festival celebrates an important right that the Public Library, and many libraries nationwide, advocate.

“The library is the bastion of information,” Public Library assistant in circulation Terri Byers said.

“[Intellectual freedom] is the cornerstone of what the library is all about — being able to access information you want or need without hassle.”

This year, more than 60 books have been challenged or banned, according to an annual report by the library association. Some of these books are classics and staples in many high-school and junior-high classrooms.

“Books about coming-of-age and growing up seem to be challenged a little more than others,” Byers said. “The challenges to classics can be accounted for because some people believe they don’t fit into regular society anymore, like Huckleberry Finn — some people feel that it’s a racist book, but we think of it as a historic document from the time it was written.”

Library staff members do not want to disparage those who have challenged certain books. Byers and Logsden agreed that all people are entitled to their opinions.

“People who try to ban books are doing it in order to protect somebody,” Logsden said. “But I feel that people should be able to make that choice for themselves. That freedom is something that we should all appreciate, and it is too often something we take for granted.”

This year’s programs address a variety of aspects of intellectual freedom, from copyright to library budget cuts, an issue plaguing circulation desks across the country. The library will also feature a display of banned or challenged books from the past. Books such as Go Ask Alice, most Judy Blume books, and Huckleberry Finn will be on display.

Logsden and Byers cited the festival as a way to emphasize the right to read — a basic freedom that Americans should appreciate, because citizens of many countries cannot.

“How do you live life within a place where you don’t have that most basic freedom?” Logsden said.

“It is fundamental to how we live. [This festival] is an opportunity for us to stop, and reflect on it, and to have an appreciation that we live in a country where we have that freedom.”