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.