Libraries and Book Challenges

Great Debates
1

To spin this off from the current debate thread about mayor Palin’s actions vis-a-vis her library I’d like to see a bit of a discussion about if, or when, it might be legitimate to challenge a book being in a given library’s collection.

And contrariwise, at what point is a library’s refusal to stock given books discriminatory?

To give a concrete example: Let’s consider this book. Grow Great Marijuana. Now, for states with a medical marijuana law in place, I see no reason for a public library not to carry this title. But that is, AIUI, a very small minority of states in the US. For most states this book is a how-to manual for committing a crime.

I question whether this book would be suitable for inclusion in a public library collection in any state that does not have medical marijuana law in place. In short, I’d think that if a book is a how-to manual for breaking the law, it is legitimate to question whether it should be a public circulating library. I can see arguments either way, myself - and I am not certain just how a final decision should be weighed.

Having said that - I’d oppose any effort to remove something like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Mein Kampf. Whatever I may feel about either books’ message, each remains a hugely influential work, with a historical impact that trumps any discomfort I might feel about their contents.

Bricker’s hypothetical NAMBLA handbook would give me more problems, as does The Anarchist’s Cookbook. Of course, I lean towards the view that TAC is simply a distillation of information readily available in other sources (chem textbooks, to name one) and sometimes flawed in its recipes. It’s certainly a book I’d want to see restricted away from teenagers.

On the other end of the scale I wonder how common it may be for a librarian to refuse to consider patron requests for magazines or books. I have seen several librarians stating that they do pick up books that they would prefer to see die an ignominious death, because they knew that their patrons would want to read them. My experience has been that this is not a universal trait, however. I’d like to hear whether anyone else has had book/magazine requests dismissed without even being considered.

2

One example of a legitimate book challenge:

My mom used to work as a librarian in the local school district. She supervised ~12 elementary school libraries (most CA schools employ clerks to actually run the libraries) and handled all book challenges–there weren’t many. Every once in a while a book that was really for older teens would make it into a children’s collection. In such cases, my mom would generally find out about it when a parent complained. It’s part of a librarian’s job to seriously consider a patron complaint or challenge, and a few times she did take books out of the collections when she found that they were inappropriate for elementary children because they just weren’t for that age group.

You might also take books out of a collection for containing inaccurate, outdated, or even dangerous medical information (along the lines of “Autism is caused by cold mothering,” though you’d probably have to stock homeopathy or that guy who claims apple cider vinegar cures everything–dang but that’s a popular book).

Recently I actually put in a patron ILL request for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a guy who clearly enjoyed reading controversial books because they were controversial). I was a little surprised to find how few copies are in California libraries; I would have thought there would be more–you know, at large universities, big city libraries, and so on.

Mein Kampf is probably in every medium-sized-or-larger public library.

I’ve never had a request completely dismissed, though some have been refused for not being interesting to enough people. Our head librarian will now buy almost any new book–that wasn’t always the case since we operate on a tight budget.

3

Libraries are often places for meetings, social encounters, and computer usage. In recent years, all of these have been contentious at times as well.

4

I used to be a public librarian. Public librarians are generally in agreement that some things, like hardcore porn, simply do not belong in a public library’s collection (though they might be appropriate for a special library). But they’re generally hostile to citizens’ groups sticking their nose into that decision. (When I worked for the Miami-Dade system, there was a big flap about a book in Spanish, Vamos a Cuba! (“Let’s Go to Cuba!”), which was part of a series of childrens’ books about various countries; being a children’s book, it simply said the things about Cuba you would expect of such a treatment, nothing about politics or Communism or Castro’s dictatorship; with the result that it made Cuba appear, to the unsophisticated reader, like a nice place to live/visit. The Cuban-exile population of Miami found this objectionable and agitated for months until they got it pulled.)

The American Library Association has an annual Banned Books Week, “Celebrating the Freedom to Read.” (It’s coming up, September 27 - October 4.) It also maintains a list of books which might never have actually been “banned” but whose inclusion in library collections (mainly school library collections) has been challenged by various pressure groups on various grounds.

5

There are no legitimate grounds for a library refusing to stock a book.

Books are just information/opinions and those are not dangerous in and of themselves. What a person does with the information or opinion is what matters and the onus there is solely on the person not the book.

Sure there is age to take into account - I wouldn’t want to see Tropic of Cancer in a children’s library collection but I wouldn’t want to see Horton Hears a Who in an adult collection either.

How many people would like to see The Bible removed from library shelves? Does that mean it should be?

Restricting access to books restricts access to information (that you are likely seeking for innocuous purposes) and is wrong.

6

The objection, BTW, was to Vamos a Cuba’s inclusion in school libraries.

7

The works of Theodore Seuss Geisel are too awesome to be kept out of any section of the library. :smiley:

8

When it’s outdated or inaccurate. It’s really the responsibility of the librarians to get rid of these books themselves, but weeding the collection isn’t always a high priority. A patron would be doing the right thing to point out that, say, a book that talks about how someday America might send a man to the moon probably doesn’t belong on the shelves.

Someone always wants to say “But what if there’s CHILD PORNOGRAPHY in the library?”, but this is a only slightly less far-fetched than “But what if there’s an evil demonic book that will kill you if you even open it?” Public libraries do not buy child pornography in the first place. As a general rule they don’t stock purely pornographic materials at all, although I have heard of some libraries carrying Playboy…for the articles!

I don’t know if people perhaps imagine that library books are brought by the book fairy, but any book in a library is there only because a librarian approved it first. The vetting process isn’t necessarily all that strict – a book might be purchased based on a single review or even the publisher’s description, and many libraries automatically purchase the latest New York Times bestsellers – but a publication with absolutely no redeeming value is unlikely to make it onto the shelves in the first place. Mistakes can happen, but before a book is yanked then thought should be given to why it was purchased in the first place.

Refusing to buy a book is not, in and of itself, discriminatory. A library can’t buy every book in the world. The public library is meant to provide information on a variety of topics and representing a variety of perspectives. As long as it’s doing a reasonable job of meeting this goal I can’t see getting too upset about the absence of one particular book. Whatever the book is, it’s unlikely to be the best or only one of its kind. A book with similar content may already be available.

If for instance I worked at a public library that already had one or more sex manuals, I might not feel the need to purchase another one just because a patron suggested it. However, if a library didn’t carry any books about sex (or evolution, or mythology, or abortion, or any other potentially controversial topic) at all, or if the only available books reflected just one side of a controversy, that would be a problem. Not necessarily outright discrimination, as it’s possible the subject area had just been neglected for a number of years and no longer reflected current views, but it would definitely be an area for improvement.

PS: Grow Great Marijuana is available at nine or so US public libraries, mostly in California but also in Detroit, Arlington Heights (outside Chicago), and, to my surprise, Jackson, Mississippi.

9

Space, money, pornography, lack of interest, surplus of other books on same subject. That’s five off the top of my head.

10

There’s at least one legitimate ground: cost. Some books are ridiculously expensive. I recall a story not too long ago about how the process of preparing the annotated papers of one of the Founding Fathers would result in a series of volumes that would cost thousands of dollars. (There were some historians and enthusiasts pushing to publish them online Wiki-fashion, allowing commentary from readers with some form of editorial control). Many libraries have small purchasing budgets, and simply have to make choices to exclude books.

That’s not to excuse them from borrowing them for a patron from a larger system, of course.

11

Nitpick: of course it is. It may not be illegal discrimination, but unless a library buys every book in the world, it is discriminating against some of them.

However, if cost isn’t a factor, e.g., somebody donates a book to the library, I see no reason not to shelve it, no matter what it is. Knowledge is power, and that power can be used for good or evil. Let’s go ahead and assume until proven otherwise that any given library patron is not evil.

12

I’m a librarian at a branch of a large university. Most libraries have (or should have) a collection development statement that delineates what books (etc.) that they purchase or collect (gifts, etc.). For example, at my library, since we’re smaller, we collect mainly in support of our campus’s curricula. We do buy popular books for our browsing collection (Stephen King’s Duma Key jumps to mind), but we select those based on what we think our students and faculty would like to read for enjoyment. The bulk of our purchases go toward (at my library) to horribly expensive books on polymer science, bunches of less expensive newer books in history and poli sci, and darn near everything decent about business and management. Due to budgetary constraints, our director mildly discourages us from buying things that we haven’t at least read a review for. But, if I see a new book about plastics engineering in a publisher’s catalog, I’m going to buy regardless, because I know it will be used.

Public libraries are a much more political animal, and I can’t really speak to a lot of that. Though I would mention again that they should have a written collection development policy that they should be able to consult and rely on in the case of challenges.

ETA: as far as donations go, our donation form clearly states that we reserve the right to discard or give away the donated books. Often they don’t fit the scope of our collection or (much more often the case), we get books like “Windows 95 for Total Idjits.”

13

One thing I did not miss during my lengthy hiatus from posting was being subjected to this sort of pointless semantic quibbling. Yes, it’s discrimination in the sense that it is making a distinction between two things. However, I was using “discriminatory” as a synonym for “prejudiced” (and just to be clear, by “prejudice” I mean “an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics”), which is both a recognized definition of the word and consistent with common usage. That’s why you were able to understand my intended meaning in the first place.

If you’d seen the kinds of useless things people donate to libraries, you might feel differently. I’m not even talking about people who want to get Holocaust denial literature on the shelves, although such people do exist. They’re outnumbered by people who’ve self-published their own family histories or awful poetry, though. And then there are the romance novels! Even at university libraries we get people who want to make a “generous” gift of grocery bags full of beat-up old Harlequins.

14

I got timed out trying to edit that last post, but I wanted to add that even a donated book isn’t really free. Someone still has to process and catalog it.

15

If you could see the number of books we get donated every week…we have a weekly booksale to earn money for new book purchases. We put some of the donations on the shelves, but not the vast majority.

Huge numbers of donated books are better sold or even thrown out. I like to go through them and collect picturesque old paperback covers to turn into projects.

16

Space is one. In the extreme case, if the library already has the title (and it is rarely checked out) then the donation is a complete waste of space. One reason to donate a book is that it is crap or obsolete…in which case the book is stealing shelf space for books that are less crappy or less obsolete.

And there is still cost with a “free” book. It costs to apply a library binding, and time to enter the book into a catalog…I bet librarians are better at it than me, but if you handed me a book, it would probably take me at least half an hour to figure out where it should be shelved and generate a useful catalog entry.

17

It’s not ‘pointless semantic quibbling’. I’m trying to point out that discrimination isn’t a bad thing, unless it is against race, religion, nationality or a few other things. Picking books may also be prejudiced, depending on one’s definition (though obviously not by your definition).

But I didn’t. I still don’t. I assume you are trying to show that ‘discriminating’ and ‘prejudging’ books isn’t a bad thing, and I agree with that. I’m just trying to point out that ‘discrimination’ isn’t a bad word. So saying “Refusing to buy a book is not, in and of itself, discriminatory” is not only technically wrong, it is perpetuating the misconception that discrimination is always a bad thing. In fact, most of the time it is a good, necessary thing.

To the others: The space constraint is one I hadn’t thought of, being used to my huge university library. I still think that the ideas in books shouldn’t be discriminated against, even if some books are. For example, “Windows 95 for Idjits” may not be a worthwhile title for a particular library, but that doesn’t mean all Windows 95-related books are unworthy. If I’m researching the history of Microsoft operating systems, I’d be pretty pissed if my local library kept out every relevant book because they were ‘out of date’. Doubly so if I’m researching counterculture or something and all the marijuana botany books and “The Anarchist Cookbook” have been kept out due to their controversial content.

18

I never (and I don’t think any quality librarian) would remove a book for content.

Your point is well taken about the Win95 books. To elaborate a little further (as we both mentioned) that book wouldn’t be appropriate for my library. However, when discarding, we try to make sure that the book isn’t the last copy in our library’s larger university collection, or, barring that, isn’t the last copy in any of the consortia we belong to. In other words, the Win95 for Idjits book would be out there somewhere, it just would take a little time to get it to you because we’d need to get it through interlibrary loan. Hope that explains a little better.

19

The problem is that I know that there are a number of sub-par quality librarians out there.

One reason I got out of using the public libraries as my reading tastes matured was that my local library had a grand total of four SF books in the collection, and no desire to get any more. Now, part of this is simply a reflection that at the time the majority of SF was being published solely in mass-market paperback editions, which are understandably unpopular with librarians looking for value for their book buying budgets.

But when I inquired about the possibility of having the library get a subscription to Analog, and was told that the librarian wouldn’t even pass on my request because they either don’t or won’t carry that kind of thing, it left an impression. I know, now, I was far too timid and should have made a public stink about that. Or at least confirmed that the person I was speaking with knew I was looking for a fiction magazine instead of some kind of stroke magazine.

So I read a comment, like Lamia’s complaint about people handing off huge bags of Harlequin Romances and have to make an effort to remind myself that it’s more likely a measure of how many copies that the library already has, or a measure of the condition of the books in question, rather than a belief that, say, keeping a pot manual around is a more valid use of library resources than keeping popular fiction available. (Whatever one might think about the quality of Harlequin’s offerings, I think that it’s fair to point out that they have been doing very well financially - which indicates a pretty stable market for their product.)

Lamia, please don’t take that as an attack, I don’t mean it as one. I am aware of the many ways that such a donation would be more hassle than it is worth for you, or your library. I just meant to use your comment to illustrate an emotional reaction on my part.

20

OtakuLoki other than what you said about making a bigger stink, always make sure you’re talking to a librarian. Most of who you see at any library are paraprofessional staff (who are largely very good workers) who might not have a larger sense of what the collection should look like. If it was a librarian, you should go up the chain. You may not win (for a variety of reasons), but truth be told, I think your chances are better than 60/40 on any given topic. It might not be a fully developed SF collection, but I bet you’d get a decent, if small, selection (especially given the low cost of MM paperbacks).

So I guess I would repeat, make sure you’re talking to a librarian. If you are, then ask for the librarian in charge of collection development. If you still get no, talk to the library director. Honestly, it might be a pain, but it can’t hurt and you may well be representing a larger, quieter segment of the library’s service area.

I’ll also say that these are among several reasons I’m glad I’m an academic librarian…we don’t tend to have many of these pressures (we have others, but I can deal with those). God love the public librarians, I don’t know if I could do what they do.