A week for banned books

I knew books were challenged sometimes, but this week really had some interesting cases.

First, dictionaries removed from classrooms in one California school district. Apparently a parent complained because one can find definitions of words they consider "inappropriate." Personally, this just seems crazy but apparently is being discussed seriously by a panel there.

Second, a Virginia district switching to a different edition of the Diary of Anne Frank. I didn't realize there were different editions. I understand that the traditional edition is a version expurgated of certain content by Anne's father Otto. My quick thought is that if it was in Anne's original diary, then clearly it's representative of thoughts that naturally occur to kids in the 13-15 year old range. So I'm not sure I can see why someone would believe it'd be particularly traumatizing for them to read.

But I suppose the take away for me on these is that people will challenge books for reasons I just can't fathom. These are the cases that it's easy for me to oppose, but it's equally important to oppose the other cases as well. As librarians we are responsible for making information available to people and letting the accept or reject it as they will.

FBI Access to Records

Not to keep harping on the same subject, but I found this article about the FBI obtaining phone records based on little more than a post-it note relevant to our thinking about Intellectual Freedom issues in libraries.

Unlike libraries, phone companies don't seem to have much of a culture of protecting customer/patron information. As a result they were sometimes all too eager to go along with any request from an FBI agent, assuming that the information requested must be urgent and important to an investigation. Perhaps they weren't even aware of the system of warrants/subpeonas that are meant to offer some independent oversight that the requests really are relevant to an ongoing investigation.

While I'm sure there are librarians out there who aren't entirely on board the intellectual freedom train, and may be willing to provide information to a police officer or FBI agent, especially when pressured, I would hope that no one would give up that information based solely on a polite question and a scribbled post-it note. But maybe I'm being overly optimistic here.

Records privacy vs professors and others

In the past I've considered the privacy of library records primarily in relation to government requests for that information. This is perhaps because the most dramatic examples come from that direction. However, I've recently read/heard about a couple other cases that I think are pretty interesting.

The first: I've recently started volunteering at my local library.  One of the items that came up during the volunteer orientation involved the privacy of library information. How we should given the impression that we neither know nor care about what the patron is reading.

An aside - this was also interesting in that it was reinforced that we shouldn't make positive comments on the patron's selection because it draws attention to the fact we have this knowledge. And perhaps the patron will be led to thinking, "Well, sure they like that I'm reading this, but do I really want them to see that I also want to read that? Better not to check it out."

 As part of the privacy training, one example of records privacy was mentioned - that even family members shouldn't get a pass to see what their wife/son/whatever has checked out. We don't know their personal situation and it's just better for everyone if we don't give out that information as policy, even if the requester says it's for some innocuous purpose like making sure to collect all the books coming due soon from the house.

The other example that struck me was in reading the ALA's Guidelines for Developing a Library Privacy Policy which included a mention of a professor seeking evidence for plagiarism in Section III.

The mere fact that students are enrolled in courses should not jeopardize their privacy rights. Thus, student circulation records for course-required and reserve reading should be protected from inquiry with the same rigor as their circulation records for personal reading. Librarians assisting in investigations of plagiarism should take care to protect the usage records of individual students.

It occurred to me that I would naturally be sympathetic to the professor's plight, whereas I've been somewhat culturally conditioned to be wary of the motives of government agents asking for similar records.

The unifying theme of these two separate examples it the way it's driven home that we need to be wary of going along with someone because their motives seem reasonable to us. Privacy protections mean more than just privacy from the request of government representatives, but also from the requests of others no matter how innocuous they may seem.

How absolute should Intellectual Freedom be?

First post of the blog.  And I think I'll start by looking at how absolute should we take Intellectual Freedom to be.  I'll be looking at it particularly from the perspective of what sort of materials should we have on our shelves at the library.

The second point of the ALA's Library Bill of Rights says, "Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view."  This sounds pretty absolute to me, and at a first read is something I'd readily agree with. But then I start thinking of how far this reaches. After all, the first sort of material I thought of was points of view I had agreed with that had been subject to challenges.  But that's the easy stuff - the hard questions are how you handle material you don't agree with.

And so I started to think about material I would find objectionable.  I doubt I'll shock anyone if I go on record as being against racial prejudice.  The Library Bill of Rights would say that a library collection should not avoid material due to it advocating segregation or racial superiority/inferiority.  This is backed up by the Diversity in Collection Development interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights. Our text calls this out by discussing books such as Little Black Sambo.  And so I had to give this principle some real thought.  Do I agree that libraries ought to carry all sorts of material, even material that advocates racial prejudice or other views I find abhorent?

In the end I agree with the ALA's Bill of Rights that the library ought not shy away from such works. As the ALA's policy statements argue, democracy implicitly relies on the idea that "the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad." In the end we must trust our neighbors to choose for themselves what they believe and trust that the truth will shine through. To exclude books in the library for their point of view, even in the service of ideals we believe strongly in, is to prevent society from being able to fully consider, and hopefully reject those viewpoints.