By now most progressives have heard about Sarah Palin’s efforts to fire the Wasilla City Librarian because the librarian affirmed her professional obligation to resist censorship:
Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.
The librarian,Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to”resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.
Since censorship is acceptable to Palin, if she were to become our Vice-President (and, given McCain’s age, God-forbid, our President), we can only assume that the library censorship zealots would be encouraged to intensify efforts like those described in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
[A] local group, organized into a loose coalition by a local chapter of Citizens Against Pornography, began questioning books found in all county library branches in August after Ellisville parent Laura Kostial approached some of the anti-pornography group’s members. Kostial had visited the Daniel Boone branch several times with her 12-year-old daughter and found material she thought “shocking.”
The anti-pornography group has made the following demands:
– Establish an adult advisory committee to screen the books before they are placed in the libraries.
One assumes that these folks would then try to pack this advisory committee in order to be sure that only the books they approve of make it into the collection.
– Construct a system by which parents would authorize their children to check out objectionable material.
And again, what’s objectionable? Who decides? And why should the library devote the time required to implement and maintain a ratings program designed to enforce values that are the responsibililty of the parents to enforce?
Also bear in mind that library acquisitions are usually governed by a selection policy. Any patron can ask that a particular book be reviewed in the light of that policy.
– Set up a ratings system that would alert parents the material can be considered objectionable.
See the comment above–who develops the rating system and do these fools have any idea how ponderous such a system would be to administer? Remember that everything librarians do costs the public money since it takes the place of other activities that cannot be performed with the same level of staff.
– Remove the books in question from the teen section and transfer them to an adult section.
This demand speaks for itself–these folks want to deny all children access to materials that many parents may not find troubling at all. (And the Post-Dispatch article notes that the there is already a teen advisory body which reviews materials in this section).
I am not too concerned by this particular challenge since almost all public libraries are aware of the potential for problems with these groups, and have developed clear policies for responding to their demands while meeting their obligations as librarians. Additionally most libraries can offer clearly articulated policies that describe their collection and access policies and are quite willing to defend them. As the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom spokesperson noted:
.. history – and legal precedent – is not on the library critics’ side.
When you’re talking about government agencies, be it a school board or a public library, they found that kids do have First Amendment rights in libraries …
Indeed, the St. Louis County Libraries are gearing up to resist. Their initial response points out that:
Library administrators maintain that anybody who wants to challenge the library’s collection can submit a materials reconsideration form, and that to remove the books from their current location would constitute censorship.
And of course, the authoritarian desire to impose one’s own world-view on others is evident in the local group’s appeal to a national organization, the National Coalition for the Protection of Family and Children, the director of which stated:
… if we don’t see some changes, then the coalition will get involved with this, and we fight pretty hard. We’ve been around long enough to have had an effect on these issues.
The problem is that efforts of this sort not only distract libraries and librarians from addressing more pressing priorities, but that they can be used to create misunderstanding of library policies in the community at large. (I have to add that, in this regard, it didn’t help that the Post-Dispatch printed some soft-porn-like extracts from some of the books hat were questioned while providing no context.)
It is worth noting that library censorship groups have proliferated over the past few years–take a look, for instance, at SafeLibraries.org if you are interested in the tone of the attacks. The American Library Association’s affiliated organization, the Freedom to Read Foundation not only helps lead the fight against similar censorship efforts, but documents their incidence in their reports. Ask your librarian about the reports if you are interested in learning more.