“A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.” ~ Mary Jo Godwin
Salutations!
The above quotation is commonly attributed to Mary Jo Godwin, a former Wilson Library Bulletin editor, and the passage regardless of origin featured prominently in a discussion on intellectual freedom during my INFO 5000 Introduction to Information Professions in Fall 2022; during one week’s assignments, we were asked to describe any experiences we had with censorship, a task which really made me look at my own actions under a microscope.
During my last year of elementary teaching, one of our K-12 library department meetings focused on the reconsideration policy our district had in place since a highly conservative parents’ group had challenged a handful of books in our middle and high school collections due to explicit language (both anatomical vocabulary and profanity) and thematic elements involving… um… shall we say politely “teen physical relations?” The librarians at the schools influenced by this news were told by our department head (one of the high school librarians) to keep the items on the circulating shelves without alluding to the current issues some individuals and families were having to those specific titles. In their initial complaint, the group provided a completely copied and pasted document of all the “spicy” bits of the books with page number citations taken completely out of context, sometimes even a single sentence pulled into the compilation that had one mildly profane word. Per our district policies, the representative of the complaint was provided with a printed packet by our department head containing the board-approved reconsideration request form to be completed and returned, our district’s reconsideration and collection development policies, the ALA Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read Statement, the Code of Ethics, which was never completed and submitted back to the library media specialist of the school where the complaint was originally filed. If it had, a committee would have been assembled of librarians, teachers, and administrators at the building and district levels to read the materials in question and decide whether they needed to be restricted in open access or removed from the collections. Interestingly, all of these documents my old distinct included were listed as essential to public library packets for patrons lodging formal complaints with library materials, displays, or programs in a recent presentation on library challenges at a recent all-staff development day at my present library, given only when requested by a patron from our director.
One of my other schools, by their traditionally-expected addition of Accelerated Reader information on each book via shelf-ready materials purchased from specific vendors, essentially demanded I engage in an ALA-frowned-upon labeling system, which was an instance of my school theoretically “[assuming] that the library [media center I was managing had] the institutional wisdom to decide what [was] appropriate or not appropriate for users to access; such decisions should [have been] placed in the [student users,] not the library” (Rubin & Rubin, 2020, p. 525). Rubin and Rubin cite ALA’s interpretation of the First Amendment to include specifically “ ‘organizing collections by reading management program level, ability, grade, or age level is another example of restricted access’ and fails to consider the reading abilities of many library users” (p. 518). I can’t remember the multiple times a child was denied a book I encouraged him or her to borrow by the classroom teacher because it was above or below the child’s current AR level! Those level/quiz information sticks on the covers and the color dots on the sides where the ban of my existence. I would book talk titles of interest to some kiddos only to be faced with them saying “but it’s not a blue dot” or “it’s not my level.”
Thus far in my 6+ years actively in school library media centers and my current employment public library, I have not been personally offended or made uncomfortable by specific materials or programming to the point of filing any formal complaints, as I feel I adequately exercise my ability to separate my professional responsibilities from my personal beliefs on potentially controversial topics. Admittedly though, I have requested my Children’s department supervisor move the majority of the Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery, especially the fifth book Anne’s House of Dreams to the Teen collection upstairs, since the series grows up with Anne into her late adulthood and being the mother of 6 children, just like one would expect of the first installment being published in 1908 (L. M. Montgomery Online, 2022a) intended ultimately, I believe, for a readership that would age along with the young literary heroine until the last novel published in 1921, featuring Anne’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Rilla, in the eighth book (L. M. Montgomery Online, 2022b). In Anne’s House of Dreams, particularly, I am well-acquainted with the situation that is extremely sad and perplexing on many levels from at least two reads of the series, which I won’t divulge, lest I spoil the plot arch for Anne fans who haven’t got that far in the series. This did not come from a place of offense or wanting to restrict individuals’ access to one of my most beloved series; I was merely uncomfortable about a sensitive child or multi-age family reading together flying through the series enamored of fourteen-year-old Anne, as I was in early high school when I was first introduced to her, and being potentially (in worst case scenario) traumatized by what happens to Anne and her baby. Having never read the series, my supervisor, completely unaware of the potentially troubling plot intricacies after Anne married, agreed with me on their transfer, yet the copies were still listed as being in the Children’s department on our OPAC and have seemed to disappear from our shelves without a trace before reaching the Teen shelves upstairs when I last checked several months ago. I now see my request might actually, and unwittingly on my part, fall under the umbrella of a challenge with my expected outcome being the transference of the books to another department within the library (K. Chisum, personal communication, November 9, 2022), yet no one has corroborated my suspicion or taken me to task for the so-called incident.
RLGing,
Sarah Hope
References: L. M. Montgomery Online. (2022a, January 22). Anne of green gables. https://lmmonline.org/anne-of-green-gables/
L. M. Montgomery Online. (2022b, October 31). Rilla of ingleside. https://lmmonline.org/rilla-of-ingleside/
Rubin, R. E. & Rubin, R. G. (2020). Foundations of library and information science (5th ed.). ALA Neal-Schuman.