The Annoyed Librarian's Take

And just in time for the end of this course, the Annoyed Librarian weighs in on questions of intellectual freedom.

While overly strident in his opinion piece, I think he raises some good points. The blog post was a little long so I'll respond to the high points.

I think he's right to point out that challenges are not the same as government censorship. This was even discussed in the lectures in this class. But seems to be trying to use this to say that challenges thus shouldn't be a concern, which is something I disagree with.

He talk about how most challenges are made to school and public libraries for "language, sexuality, or age appropriateness" - and I suspect he's right that teh vast majority of these are for children's books, or young adult books which is an age group he didn't address and could be even more likely to be challenged. And here he seems willing to just let any challenge go through. Even when we've seen even completely inoffensive books are challenged - Harry Potter, for example.

In the end he seems to just exclude the middle - either we must ensure that any sort of material is accessible to anyone, even 6 year olds with Penthouse; or the ALA should just give it up and not oppose any challenge. Which is a bit silly. No one is shelving Penthouse in the children's section because it doesn't belong there.

While he makes us think about how we decide what material goes into section of the library and what material the library ought to buy, he does so by essentially declaring that anyone opposing any sort of censorship or challenges in the library are ideological loons. Yes, the OIF may come of as overly concerned about certain relatively minor matters at times, but that's the nature of groups focusing on a single issue.

In all, I think the AL's blog post is thought provoking and he makes a few interesting points, but he goes too far in caricaturing the ALA OIF's position and the position of anyone that agrees with them.

Differing perspectives

One of our most recent lectures touched on something that's been a recurring theme in the class. Well, technically it was an interview with a lobbyist, not a lecture, but close enough. The interview subject said that to persuade legislators, he needs to approach them and the issue from their perspective. What is it they find important? What is it that they care about?

Throughout the course we've been touching on this overall idea that everyone surrounding this issue has their own priorities and goals. And it's important to understand those and engage with them in order to hopefully come to some reasonable resolution.

Librarians tend to place a high priority on intellectual freedom; the freedom to speak, read, see, and think whatever you like.

Some parents and others place a high priority on protecting children from immoral or negative influences. (Whether the materials they oppose are actually immoral or a negative influence on children is beside the point of this post.)

Some people, often represented by law enforcement agencies, place a high priority on keeping honest citizens safe from harm.

But these priorities will come into conflict. We'd all like to live in a place where we have absolute intellectual freedom, and law enforcement is able to keep us perfectly safe without intruding on our freedoms, and no child (or adult) is exposed to material that may traumatize them or lead them to immoral actions. Unfortunately such a society is impossible.

So we're left in this imperfect world where we each struggle for our priorities. But each of these groups have a reasonable goal, we just disagree on how far the goals of the others should be compromised for our goal. And by attempting to see issues from the perspective of the other side, we can hopefully find some common ground and language to resolve issues as they arise.

<sarcasm>Unless they're trying to ban the dictionary; that's just crazy.</sarcasm>