Jim Writer 4 | - Freelance Writer
Aug 23, 2018 | #1
As modern libraries fight to remain relevant in the midst of budget cuts, insufficient funding, and society's gradual move towards more dependence on Internet resources, challenges to materials deemed "objectionable" by library patrons continue to be a hot-button issue. While some patrons forgo the usual debate in favor of a felt-tip marker and their own questionable judgment, librarians continue to straddle the line between censorship and selection while attempting to please all. In the modern library system, the rights of the patron have become a question of responsibility and an ethical dilemma for librarians who desire to uphold the principles of intellectual freedom while addressing challenges and community pressures.
Introduction
Recently, I checked out a book from my local library in Lucedale, Mississippi: a comedic crime novel entitled Agnes and the Hitman, by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. Having read books by both Crusie and Mayer in the past, I expected some semblance of crude language, particularly from Mayer, a former Green Beret whose work admittedly does not shy away from invective. What I did not expect, however, was to discover that someone had gone through the entire novel and censored some of this language. For every occurrence of the expletive "goddamn," the word "damn" had been crossed out with a heavy black marker. Interestingly, the censor's opposition only applied to this particular curse; the words "f*ck" and "s*it" were left whole and intact, even within the same paragraph on certain pages.
When I spoke with the library's branch manager, Rebecca Wheeler, about this issue, she informed me that, much to her annoyance, the library discovers patron-censored books in their collection two to three times per month. However, discovering the culprit in these cases has been nearly impossible, according to Wheeler: "Unfortunately, we do not keep circulation records, so it's hard for us to figure out who has been doing this" (R. Wheeler, personal communication). Still, despite the fact that their actions would be considered the destruction of public property, even if the person responsible is identified, the most that would happen would be to enact a ban from all seven libraries within the system. The culprit's censorship, in the meantime, will have succeeded: the defaced books will remain in the library's collection because replacing every disfigured book is simply too cost inhibitive to consider.
Instances of patron-censored books in this country are not what one would label "widespread," but such cases exist nonetheless. In October 2009, the Maury County Public Library in Columbia, Tennessee, reported that an unknown patron has been crossing out offensive language in some of the books in their fiction section. Library director Elizabeth Potts decries such censorship as a violation of the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, stating that the "self-made censor is binding the mouth of an author" by essentially copy-editing an already copyrighted text ("Censorship Mystery," 2009). And these types of self-assigned censors are not limited to the southern region of the United States; in March 2010, a woman blogged that her mother, a regular patron at a library in California, has recently found more than half a dozen patron-censored books at her local branch. As she reports, these books were censored similarly to my copy of Agnes and the Hitman: "The words that are crossed out aren't the words normally considered filthy ... they are words that someone obviously considers blasphemes ... like goddammit and Jesus Christ" ("Censorship at a Public Library," 2010).
Is patron censorship of materials becoming a trend in libraries today, or has it always been a below-the-radar issue? Have some patrons, unhappy with a particular library's choice of including books with offensive or off-color language, moved beyond protests and debate and simply taken the matter of censorship into their own hands? And, in doing so, have these purported upholders of morality and social order overstepped their bounds by infringing upon the rights of other patrons and impeding the efforts of librarians to do their jobs to the best of their respective abilities?
There is no easy answer to the latter question. Yet even a cursory examination of the history of the selection versus censorship debate-what some would label the cornerstone of the study of library science and information management-leads me to believe that hand-censoring selected texts by purging them of words deemed inappropriate by a cadre of disapproving readers is most decidedly not the solution. Not only is such censorship an illegal offense (the destruction of library property), but it is a reprehensible affront to intellectual freedom, the basis of an open library system.
For the purposes of this paper, I will address censorship issues in printed works, as the discussion on attempts to monitor and limit access to Internet materials is its own intrinsically complex issue. In doing so, I hope to answer the question that has plagued me since discovering Lucedale's own personal library censor: in a technological and budget-conscious era that has seen their gradual decline, what is the modern library patron's role in helping libraries remain relevant in today's society?
For decades, librarians and library professionals have walked the often fine line between honoring the Code of Ethics of the ALA, or American Library Association (2008), which guarantees that librarians will "uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources," and respecting the desires of library patrons who feel that they, or their children, should not be exposed to certain materials. The duty of enabling intellectual freedom-defined by the ALA (2010) as "the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction ... [and] free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored"-is considered by most librarians to be a sacred one. Still, some library professionals find themselves regularly flirting with the issue of censorship as it relates to one of the most important jobs of the librarian: selection.
The roots of the argument over selection versus censorship can be traced to Lester Asheim's seminal 1953 article "Not Censorship but Selection," in which the author, a former professor and library graduate school dean, formally outlines the difference between the two actions. Asheim (1953) namely defines selection as a necessary evil put into place due to "physical impossibility;" that is, that "no library in the world is large enough to house even one copy of every printed publication." As Asheim (1953) further explains, the innate difference between the process of selection and the act of censorship comes down to a value judgment; essentially, while the selector looks at acquisitions from a "positive" (inclusionary) approach, the censor's viewpoint is an inherently "negative" (exclusionary) one:
"For to the selector, the important thing is to find reasons to keep the book. Given such a guiding principle, the selector looks for values, for strengths, for virtues which will over shadow minor objections. For the censor, on the other hand, the important thing is to find reasons to reject the book; his guiding principle leads him to seek out the objectionable features, the weaknesses, the possibilities for misinterpretation. And since there is seldom a flawless work in any form, the censor's approach can destroy much that is worth saving." (Negative or Positive? section, para. 1)
However, in an examination of Asheim's argument, Tony Doyle questions this type of black-and-white approach to such a complex issue, claiming that "Asheim's distinction between selection and censorship is so vague as to be dubious in theory and useless in practice" (p. 18). Doyle claims that Asheim, who revised his own thesis in 1983 to focus more on the actual mechanics of an unbiased process of selection, promotes an "ideal of an unbiased collection ... with unlimited access" (p. 19) that is inaccessible in modern libraries, particularly in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, as some critics advocate a "relaxation of First Amendment protections" in the name of protecting the country. Similarly, John B. Harer also sees this kind of knee-jerk justification of censorship in the recent calls for a "Parental Empowerment Act"-designed to give parents a voice in the material selection process in school libraries by instituting a form of parental advisory boards over those libraries-as "interfer[ing] with the professional responsibilities of the school library media specialist ... quite possibly strip[ping] them of their professional judgment in selection" (p. 18).
Is Asheim's ideal really all that inaccessible? Perhaps the answer to that question depends on librarians themselves. Most purport to follow the ALA's Library Bill of Rights, first adopted in 1939 and reaffirmed most recently in 1996, which declares that libraries and library professionals "should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment." But even though some refuse to admit it, by engaging in at times wily manipulation of their own selection process, librarians are more than capable of self-censoring, or the deliberate exclusion of certain materials, by preventing those materials from making their way into collections for various and sundry reasons.
According to Cora McAndrews Moellendick (2009), these reasons can range from "limited budgets, lack of interest or demand, [and] inadequate shelf space ... [to] lack of relevance to curriculum" (p. 72). But these "reasons" come across to many as mere justifications for censorship, with librarians acting as not the guardians of free access to information, but the barrier preventing easy accessibility. Bonnie Osif (2005) takes this one step further, claiming that such barriers are "dangerous" as they seemingly inhibit a person's reasoning ability:
"If something offends, it might also cause deeper analysis or more research. In our information world, that cannot be seen as a negative action. By denying the right to these ideas, information, or discourse this censorship is harmful ... This is a principle that has been at the core of librarianship. Information should be available. (p. 46)
In essence, the issue of selection versus censorship comes down to one thing: who controls access to information? The power librarians hold in the debate over intellectual freedom is staggering when one actually sits down to think about it. How do librarians, then, avoid using that power in a negative fashion due to personal bias?"
As previously noted, many librarians find that they must reconcile their own belief systems-religious, moral, societal, political, or otherwise-with the needs of their patrons, ensuring that a personal bias against some subject matter does not hinder their ability to uphold their professional responsibility. As Christine M. Allen proposes, librarians "must all become censors of [them]selves ... [and] be very vigilant with respect to those elusive elements that can predetermine [their] collection decisions without conscious knowledge" (p. 5). Debbie Abilock also promotes that librarians self-examine their beliefs as "a necessary check against narrow-mindedness, ignorance, and bias" (p. 7). In that vein, librarians must recognize that they are not infallible creatures while acknowledging that sometimes, setting aside one's personal beliefs for the sake of intellectual freedom is harder than it may seem.
In a 2008 survey, published the following year in the School Library Journal, library professionals and media specialists from 654 school libraries (on elementary, middle school, and high school levels) across the country were asked a series of questions designed to determine levels of self-censorship in the modern library system. The results of this anonymous survey revealed that 87% of respondents admitted to passing on purchasing a book because of "sexual content;" 61% because of "language;" 51% because of "violence;" and 47% because of "homosexuality." Debra Lau Whelan, who conducted the survey for SLJ, calls such self-censorship-in which librarians deliberately fail to add certain books to their collections because of content or fear of challenges from patrons-the "dirty little secret that no one in the profession wants to talk about or admit practicing" (p. 28).
Self-censorship in the modern library takes many forms, but three of the main ways by which librarians take on the role of censor are labeling, restricting access, and expurgation. As defined by Charlene C. Cain (2006), labeling is the fixing of materials with a "prejudicial designation" designed to discourage patrons from choosing to read that material (p. 7). Similarly, restricting access to particular materials creates the illusion that such materials are too scandalous to be included with the "normal" materials in a collection; this also creates a barrier between the patron and the material, as the librarian becomes the de facto "middle man" running interference between the two. The most insidious of these censoring methods, however, is expurgation, defined by the ALA as "any deletion, excision, alteration, editing or obliteration of any part(s) ... of library resources by the library, its agent, or its parent institution" (as cited in Cain, p. 7-8). In essence, expurgation prevents readers from experiencing the entire book and violates the copyright privileges of the author, whose work cannot be edited in this manner without permission. Expurgation is the method preferred by the previously-mentioned marker-wielding patrons in Mississippi, Tennessee, and California, but according to Cain, librarians themselves have been guilty of similar instances of expurgation "in order to make [materials] more palatable to some library patrons" (p. 7).
Initially, it seems difficult to believe that librarians or library employees would indulge in any of these exercises, but examine the case of Sharon Cook, formerly an employee at the Jessamine County Public Library in Nicholasville, Kentucky. In late 2008, Cook checked out the library's only copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume IV: The Black Dossier, a graphic novel portraying explicit visual scenes of sex and violence. She continued to check out the book repeatedly for more than nine months until a hold was placed on the material after an eleven-year-old girl requested it. Cook and another employee, Beth Boisvert, then collaborated to remove the hold from the book to prevent the child from checking it out. The following day, both women were fired at the orders of the library board.
Cook and Boisvert have been labeled both heroes and villains by critics. Some claim that their actions are laudable because they acted out of "concern" for the child involved. Others condemn their actions as antithetical to the First Amendment and a violation of civil liberties. But in the wake of the furor over the firings, Boisvert painted their fight in more crusading terms: because the two women live and work in a self-labeled "conservative community," she argued, "we will choose to have our children protected" (Wilson) over ensuring the guarantee of intellectual freedom. Still, the claim of "protecting our children"-a battle-cry for censors if there ever was one-does not, by any definition, justify a deliberate breach of ethical responsibility. Though the two women in question are, admittedly, not librarians (neither Cook nor Boisvert holds an MLS degree), as employees of a library that had openly adopted the ALA Code of Ethics as its own, the responsibility for promoting and securing intellectual freedom became theirs. By deliberately withholding materials from their patrons, these library employees committed a gross violation of their ethical and professional duty and have done a great disservice to the community which they otherwise claim to protect.
Conclusion
When a librarian accepts a position and begins the process of building, rebuilding, or supplementing a collection, they also intrinsically accept the responsibilities outlined by the ALA Code of Ethics, and agree to honor the pursuit of intellectual freedom by guaranteeing free and open access to information in their libraries. When a librarian is tested by a challenged book or an offended patron, it is the librarian's duty not to quail under opposition, but to continue to uphold their ethical responsibility to maintaining accessibility to the materials their library holds.
This ethical responsibility extends, albeit informally, to a library's patrons as well. Though patrons are, obviously, not bound to uphold the tenets of the ALA's Code of Ethics, they are, by virtue of the privilege to borrow from a library's collection, bound to uphold and respect the rights of others to access information and material without impediment. In taking matters into their own hands and expurgating objectionable words or phrases from library materials, patrons are flouting the freedom that comes from the ownership of a library card. If librarians must find a way to set aside personal distaste for the sake of providing relevant, needed materials to a wide variety of patrons, those patrons must, for the sake of the modern library's continued success, respect the right of all readers to obtain the information they need and desire.
Censoring library property is never the solution to concerns about objectionable material. In many ways, it would be akin to walking up to a person on the street and slapping a piece of duct tape on his/her mouth to avoid hearing offensive language. In the end, we are all adults, and as condescending as it sounds to actually put it into words, it is time we all grew up and, while we are at it, remember one of the biggest lessons of childhood: if it does not belong to you, do not damage it. If you, Anonymous Library Patron, find something objectionable in a book, do not cross it out. And if you cannot bring yourself to continue reading a "trashy" or "disgusting" book, simply force yourself to put it down. As the very frustrated Maury County Public Library director Elizabeth Potts says, "Why deface a book? If you don't like what's in it, shut it and bring it back" ("Censorship Mystery," 2009).
References
Abilock, D. (2007). Four questions to ask yourself. Knowledge Quest, 36(2), 7-11.
Allen, C.M. (2008). Are we selecting? Or are we censoring? Young Adult Library Services, 5(3), 5.
American Library Association. (2008). Code of ethics of the American Library Association.
American Library Association. (2010). Intellectual freedom and censorship Q & A.
American Library Association. (1996). Library Bill of Rights.
Cain, C.C. (2006). Librarians and censorship: the ethical imperative. Louisiana Libraries, 68(3), 6-8.
Censorship mystery brewing inside public library. (2009).
Doyle, T. (2002). Selection versus censorship in libraries. Collection Management, 27(1), 15-25.
Harer, J.B. (2009). Parental involvement in selection: mandated or our choice? Library Media Connection, 28(3), 18-19.
Kobysmere. (2010). Censorship at a public library.
Moellendick, C.M. (2009). Libraries, censors, and self-censorship. Pacific Northwest Library Association Quarterly, 73(4), 68-76.
Osif, B. Selection and censorship. Library Administration & Management, 19(1), 42-46.
Wheeler, R. (2010). Branch Manager, Lucedale-George County Public Library System. Telephone interview.
Whelan, D.L. (2009). A dirty little secret. School Library Journal, 55(2), 27-30.
Whelan, D.L. (2009). SLJ self-censorship survey. School Library Journal, 55(2).
Wilson, A. (2009). Child protection or censorship? Lexington Herald-Leader.
IntroductionRecently, I checked out a book from my local library in Lucedale, Mississippi: a comedic crime novel entitled Agnes and the Hitman, by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. Having read books by both Crusie and Mayer in the past, I expected some semblance of crude language, particularly from Mayer, a former Green Beret whose work admittedly does not shy away from invective. What I did not expect, however, was to discover that someone had gone through the entire novel and censored some of this language. For every occurrence of the expletive "goddamn," the word "damn" had been crossed out with a heavy black marker. Interestingly, the censor's opposition only applied to this particular curse; the words "f*ck" and "s*it" were left whole and intact, even within the same paragraph on certain pages.
When I spoke with the library's branch manager, Rebecca Wheeler, about this issue, she informed me that, much to her annoyance, the library discovers patron-censored books in their collection two to three times per month. However, discovering the culprit in these cases has been nearly impossible, according to Wheeler: "Unfortunately, we do not keep circulation records, so it's hard for us to figure out who has been doing this" (R. Wheeler, personal communication). Still, despite the fact that their actions would be considered the destruction of public property, even if the person responsible is identified, the most that would happen would be to enact a ban from all seven libraries within the system. The culprit's censorship, in the meantime, will have succeeded: the defaced books will remain in the library's collection because replacing every disfigured book is simply too cost inhibitive to consider.
Instances of patron-censored books in this country are not what one would label "widespread," but such cases exist nonetheless. In October 2009, the Maury County Public Library in Columbia, Tennessee, reported that an unknown patron has been crossing out offensive language in some of the books in their fiction section. Library director Elizabeth Potts decries such censorship as a violation of the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, stating that the "self-made censor is binding the mouth of an author" by essentially copy-editing an already copyrighted text ("Censorship Mystery," 2009). And these types of self-assigned censors are not limited to the southern region of the United States; in March 2010, a woman blogged that her mother, a regular patron at a library in California, has recently found more than half a dozen patron-censored books at her local branch. As she reports, these books were censored similarly to my copy of Agnes and the Hitman: "The words that are crossed out aren't the words normally considered filthy ... they are words that someone obviously considers blasphemes ... like goddammit and Jesus Christ" ("Censorship at a Public Library," 2010).
Is patron censorship of materials becoming a trend in libraries today, or has it always been a below-the-radar issue? Have some patrons, unhappy with a particular library's choice of including books with offensive or off-color language, moved beyond protests and debate and simply taken the matter of censorship into their own hands? And, in doing so, have these purported upholders of morality and social order overstepped their bounds by infringing upon the rights of other patrons and impeding the efforts of librarians to do their jobs to the best of their respective abilities?
There is no easy answer to the latter question. Yet even a cursory examination of the history of the selection versus censorship debate-what some would label the cornerstone of the study of library science and information management-leads me to believe that hand-censoring selected texts by purging them of words deemed inappropriate by a cadre of disapproving readers is most decidedly not the solution. Not only is such censorship an illegal offense (the destruction of library property), but it is a reprehensible affront to intellectual freedom, the basis of an open library system.
For the purposes of this paper, I will address censorship issues in printed works, as the discussion on attempts to monitor and limit access to Internet materials is its own intrinsically complex issue. In doing so, I hope to answer the question that has plagued me since discovering Lucedale's own personal library censor: in a technological and budget-conscious era that has seen their gradual decline, what is the modern library patron's role in helping libraries remain relevant in today's society?
Selection versus Censorship: And Never the Twain Shall Meet
For decades, librarians and library professionals have walked the often fine line between honoring the Code of Ethics of the ALA, or American Library Association (2008), which guarantees that librarians will "uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources," and respecting the desires of library patrons who feel that they, or their children, should not be exposed to certain materials. The duty of enabling intellectual freedom-defined by the ALA (2010) as "the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction ... [and] free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored"-is considered by most librarians to be a sacred one. Still, some library professionals find themselves regularly flirting with the issue of censorship as it relates to one of the most important jobs of the librarian: selection.
The roots of the argument over selection versus censorship can be traced to Lester Asheim's seminal 1953 article "Not Censorship but Selection," in which the author, a former professor and library graduate school dean, formally outlines the difference between the two actions. Asheim (1953) namely defines selection as a necessary evil put into place due to "physical impossibility;" that is, that "no library in the world is large enough to house even one copy of every printed publication." As Asheim (1953) further explains, the innate difference between the process of selection and the act of censorship comes down to a value judgment; essentially, while the selector looks at acquisitions from a "positive" (inclusionary) approach, the censor's viewpoint is an inherently "negative" (exclusionary) one:
"For to the selector, the important thing is to find reasons to keep the book. Given such a guiding principle, the selector looks for values, for strengths, for virtues which will over shadow minor objections. For the censor, on the other hand, the important thing is to find reasons to reject the book; his guiding principle leads him to seek out the objectionable features, the weaknesses, the possibilities for misinterpretation. And since there is seldom a flawless work in any form, the censor's approach can destroy much that is worth saving." (Negative or Positive? section, para. 1)
However, in an examination of Asheim's argument, Tony Doyle questions this type of black-and-white approach to such a complex issue, claiming that "Asheim's distinction between selection and censorship is so vague as to be dubious in theory and useless in practice" (p. 18). Doyle claims that Asheim, who revised his own thesis in 1983 to focus more on the actual mechanics of an unbiased process of selection, promotes an "ideal of an unbiased collection ... with unlimited access" (p. 19) that is inaccessible in modern libraries, particularly in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, as some critics advocate a "relaxation of First Amendment protections" in the name of protecting the country. Similarly, John B. Harer also sees this kind of knee-jerk justification of censorship in the recent calls for a "Parental Empowerment Act"-designed to give parents a voice in the material selection process in school libraries by instituting a form of parental advisory boards over those libraries-as "interfer[ing] with the professional responsibilities of the school library media specialist ... quite possibly strip[ping] them of their professional judgment in selection" (p. 18).
Is Asheim's ideal really all that inaccessible? Perhaps the answer to that question depends on librarians themselves. Most purport to follow the ALA's Library Bill of Rights, first adopted in 1939 and reaffirmed most recently in 1996, which declares that libraries and library professionals "should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment." But even though some refuse to admit it, by engaging in at times wily manipulation of their own selection process, librarians are more than capable of self-censoring, or the deliberate exclusion of certain materials, by preventing those materials from making their way into collections for various and sundry reasons.
According to Cora McAndrews Moellendick (2009), these reasons can range from "limited budgets, lack of interest or demand, [and] inadequate shelf space ... [to] lack of relevance to curriculum" (p. 72). But these "reasons" come across to many as mere justifications for censorship, with librarians acting as not the guardians of free access to information, but the barrier preventing easy accessibility. Bonnie Osif (2005) takes this one step further, claiming that such barriers are "dangerous" as they seemingly inhibit a person's reasoning ability:
"If something offends, it might also cause deeper analysis or more research. In our information world, that cannot be seen as a negative action. By denying the right to these ideas, information, or discourse this censorship is harmful ... This is a principle that has been at the core of librarianship. Information should be available. (p. 46)
In essence, the issue of selection versus censorship comes down to one thing: who controls access to information? The power librarians hold in the debate over intellectual freedom is staggering when one actually sits down to think about it. How do librarians, then, avoid using that power in a negative fashion due to personal bias?"
Self-Censorship: the Modern Librarian's Foibles
As previously noted, many librarians find that they must reconcile their own belief systems-religious, moral, societal, political, or otherwise-with the needs of their patrons, ensuring that a personal bias against some subject matter does not hinder their ability to uphold their professional responsibility. As Christine M. Allen proposes, librarians "must all become censors of [them]selves ... [and] be very vigilant with respect to those elusive elements that can predetermine [their] collection decisions without conscious knowledge" (p. 5). Debbie Abilock also promotes that librarians self-examine their beliefs as "a necessary check against narrow-mindedness, ignorance, and bias" (p. 7). In that vein, librarians must recognize that they are not infallible creatures while acknowledging that sometimes, setting aside one's personal beliefs for the sake of intellectual freedom is harder than it may seem.
In a 2008 survey, published the following year in the School Library Journal, library professionals and media specialists from 654 school libraries (on elementary, middle school, and high school levels) across the country were asked a series of questions designed to determine levels of self-censorship in the modern library system. The results of this anonymous survey revealed that 87% of respondents admitted to passing on purchasing a book because of "sexual content;" 61% because of "language;" 51% because of "violence;" and 47% because of "homosexuality." Debra Lau Whelan, who conducted the survey for SLJ, calls such self-censorship-in which librarians deliberately fail to add certain books to their collections because of content or fear of challenges from patrons-the "dirty little secret that no one in the profession wants to talk about or admit practicing" (p. 28).
Self-censorship in the modern library takes many forms, but three of the main ways by which librarians take on the role of censor are labeling, restricting access, and expurgation. As defined by Charlene C. Cain (2006), labeling is the fixing of materials with a "prejudicial designation" designed to discourage patrons from choosing to read that material (p. 7). Similarly, restricting access to particular materials creates the illusion that such materials are too scandalous to be included with the "normal" materials in a collection; this also creates a barrier between the patron and the material, as the librarian becomes the de facto "middle man" running interference between the two. The most insidious of these censoring methods, however, is expurgation, defined by the ALA as "any deletion, excision, alteration, editing or obliteration of any part(s) ... of library resources by the library, its agent, or its parent institution" (as cited in Cain, p. 7-8). In essence, expurgation prevents readers from experiencing the entire book and violates the copyright privileges of the author, whose work cannot be edited in this manner without permission. Expurgation is the method preferred by the previously-mentioned marker-wielding patrons in Mississippi, Tennessee, and California, but according to Cain, librarians themselves have been guilty of similar instances of expurgation "in order to make [materials] more palatable to some library patrons" (p. 7).
Initially, it seems difficult to believe that librarians or library employees would indulge in any of these exercises, but examine the case of Sharon Cook, formerly an employee at the Jessamine County Public Library in Nicholasville, Kentucky. In late 2008, Cook checked out the library's only copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume IV: The Black Dossier, a graphic novel portraying explicit visual scenes of sex and violence. She continued to check out the book repeatedly for more than nine months until a hold was placed on the material after an eleven-year-old girl requested it. Cook and another employee, Beth Boisvert, then collaborated to remove the hold from the book to prevent the child from checking it out. The following day, both women were fired at the orders of the library board.
Cook and Boisvert have been labeled both heroes and villains by critics. Some claim that their actions are laudable because they acted out of "concern" for the child involved. Others condemn their actions as antithetical to the First Amendment and a violation of civil liberties. But in the wake of the furor over the firings, Boisvert painted their fight in more crusading terms: because the two women live and work in a self-labeled "conservative community," she argued, "we will choose to have our children protected" (Wilson) over ensuring the guarantee of intellectual freedom. Still, the claim of "protecting our children"-a battle-cry for censors if there ever was one-does not, by any definition, justify a deliberate breach of ethical responsibility. Though the two women in question are, admittedly, not librarians (neither Cook nor Boisvert holds an MLS degree), as employees of a library that had openly adopted the ALA Code of Ethics as its own, the responsibility for promoting and securing intellectual freedom became theirs. By deliberately withholding materials from their patrons, these library employees committed a gross violation of their ethical and professional duty and have done a great disservice to the community which they otherwise claim to protect.
Conclusion
When a librarian accepts a position and begins the process of building, rebuilding, or supplementing a collection, they also intrinsically accept the responsibilities outlined by the ALA Code of Ethics, and agree to honor the pursuit of intellectual freedom by guaranteeing free and open access to information in their libraries. When a librarian is tested by a challenged book or an offended patron, it is the librarian's duty not to quail under opposition, but to continue to uphold their ethical responsibility to maintaining accessibility to the materials their library holds.
This ethical responsibility extends, albeit informally, to a library's patrons as well. Though patrons are, obviously, not bound to uphold the tenets of the ALA's Code of Ethics, they are, by virtue of the privilege to borrow from a library's collection, bound to uphold and respect the rights of others to access information and material without impediment. In taking matters into their own hands and expurgating objectionable words or phrases from library materials, patrons are flouting the freedom that comes from the ownership of a library card. If librarians must find a way to set aside personal distaste for the sake of providing relevant, needed materials to a wide variety of patrons, those patrons must, for the sake of the modern library's continued success, respect the right of all readers to obtain the information they need and desire.
Censoring library property is never the solution to concerns about objectionable material. In many ways, it would be akin to walking up to a person on the street and slapping a piece of duct tape on his/her mouth to avoid hearing offensive language. In the end, we are all adults, and as condescending as it sounds to actually put it into words, it is time we all grew up and, while we are at it, remember one of the biggest lessons of childhood: if it does not belong to you, do not damage it. If you, Anonymous Library Patron, find something objectionable in a book, do not cross it out. And if you cannot bring yourself to continue reading a "trashy" or "disgusting" book, simply force yourself to put it down. As the very frustrated Maury County Public Library director Elizabeth Potts says, "Why deface a book? If you don't like what's in it, shut it and bring it back" ("Censorship Mystery," 2009).
References
Abilock, D. (2007). Four questions to ask yourself. Knowledge Quest, 36(2), 7-11.
Allen, C.M. (2008). Are we selecting? Or are we censoring? Young Adult Library Services, 5(3), 5.
American Library Association. (2008). Code of ethics of the American Library Association.
American Library Association. (2010). Intellectual freedom and censorship Q & A.
American Library Association. (1996). Library Bill of Rights.
Cain, C.C. (2006). Librarians and censorship: the ethical imperative. Louisiana Libraries, 68(3), 6-8.
Censorship mystery brewing inside public library. (2009).
Doyle, T. (2002). Selection versus censorship in libraries. Collection Management, 27(1), 15-25.
Harer, J.B. (2009). Parental involvement in selection: mandated or our choice? Library Media Connection, 28(3), 18-19.
Kobysmere. (2010). Censorship at a public library.
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