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.