Special Comment - Stupid, stupid library director

Regular readers of this blog know that I have no love for the demons of stupidity. When those demons infect people who can make big sweeping decisions without oversight or redress, the effects are often magnified and the resulting stupid is significant. And when that stupid involves books, banning, or reading, well, textual gloves come off and I’m in full-on ARGH. (Yet fully aware that since it’s not happening near me, I can’t really do much more than type and send energy into the universe that things get fixed. Everyone with a blog is a member of the fighting keyboarders, it’s just on different issues.)

After receiving an informal complaint from a conservative user associated with the 9.12 Project, yet another scheme from Glenn Beck, the library director of the Burlington County Library System deemed the book Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology to be "child pornography" and ordered its complete removal from the shelves of the library. The literary value of such a volume by itself should be obvious and an immediate check on removal decisions. Furthermore, the decision was made without the use of the formal challenge process that should have been followed to the very hilt, even if it meant the book would be recalled. There’s some very big stupid here. Let’s explore why.

1. Procedure was not followed
There is no faster way in this universe to get bureaucrats, auditors, supervisors, and the general public far enough up your ass to examine the contents of your small intestine than to not follow procedure for things. Plenty of lackeys will find themselves on the wrong end of their performance review if they are too lax with the rules, even when the greater help to a user is in walking around those rules occasionally. Once you’re at the managerial level, it’s nearly a doctrinal requirement that procedure be followed to the letter. (We note the side effect that this has in quashing creative thinking organization-wide and refer you to our earlier piece about that aspect if you are interested.) The director of the library consults with the board and her underling and then unilaterally makes a decision to remove the books without any formal challenge being filed, when there’s a formal process in place? That looks extremely bad for your organization. Either the director can be easily intimidated by political factions in the community, or they let their own biases overrule the biases of the organization. This does not bode well, ever, for continued employment, whether you are in the wrong or in the right.


2. Professional code, anyone?
This one is not necessarily a universal theme, as the American Library Association nor any other library-related professional organization holds any power to revoke someone’s professional certificate if they are found to be in breach of the ethics of the profession. That said, while decisions have to be made at some point on what to buy, what to keep, and what to discard, it is generally understood that those decisions are made based on how old the material is, its place in the canon of literature and/or whether the information contained within is still true and factual, the condition of the material itself, and whether the collection as a whole can still adequately fill the needs of users if that volume (or subject matter) is not at that library/branch. While the weeders and selectors all have their own personal biases about what they want, they are expected to present a balanced collection of views, opinions, and factual information for the people that are using their libraries. From what we’ve learned, the director did not take any of this into account before reacting and demanding the items be pulled from the shelves. She failed in her duty to keep the collection balanced.


3. Finally, Trust, but verify. Actually, scratch that. Verify, then verify again.
For serious, people! “Child pornography” is not just a loosey-goosey phrase that you can sling about wherever you like. It has a definition. For one thing, it has to be a visual depiction - text doesn't count. So most of the stories depicted therein fall outside the definition. There are a few pictures in the book, and when this book was removed from a school library, the censors claimed this image depicted two men having sex, which is fairly impressive to figure out, considering the image’s lack of clarity, and that the editor of the book said it's a stock image of a man hiking a football to another. I am not a judge, certainly, but I don’t think this would pass the tests on obscenity - graphic-ness is a component of obscenity, too, and there’s not enough in there to tell. If you’re going to claim a book that has been published by a house, meaning it went through editing and vetting processes to make sure that everything was legal and permissible, had child pornography in it, you’d better have something to back it up more than an indistinct image and the fact that it has the accounts of QUILTBAG teenagers and their experiences in it. The director had better come up with some proof to back up those claims. Otherwise, I hope the librarian who discovered the whole thing files his own request for reconsideration to bring the book back into the fold.

This underscores the need to verify and conduct a full and proper investigation whenever someone brings a claim to you about the content of a book or its appropriateness. Remember #1 above? Follow the procedures regarding a challenge, insist on the formal process so you can document your findings, whatever they may be, and you will get the justification you need to do the thing you wish. Or, at least, they can see in all the splendor just how awful you are at intellectual freedom and appoint someone else to be in charge of the reconsideration process. And who knows? Maybe you’ll go through it and find that you don’t have a leg to stand on and must say “Sorry, library selection policy says it stays.” At least then, you’ll force the aggravated user to do the censorship, instead of giving it your blessing.