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(That's "ultimate" as in "final, the last one after all others have been considered and discarded," not as in "pinnacle" or "unassailable.")
There was a comedy piece that happened to me a couple of days ago. One of the people who's part of the actual branch leadership team (as in, people with supervisory authority, rather than a librarian that gets told they can't supervise, but they are occasionally the person in charge) showed me a formal request for reconsideration form where a CD of "essential classics for kids" was being challenged because the person believed that hearing a preschool-age voice chant "Nobody likes me, everyone hates me, guess I'll go eat worms" was absolutely inappropriate for the audience the CD was intended for.
Not "Several of the tracks on this disc have their origins in minstrel shows, blackface performances, and other very racist lyrics." Not "Some of the tracks on this CD sing about children being injured or killed from the decisions they've made around animals or bad food." No, instead the objection is that there's a small voice singing about being hated and eating worms because of it. (The rest of the song is pretty gross-out by lyrics, since it describes the eating of the worms.)
This piece of comedy came after a supervisor at a different location had mentioned they'd dealt with several materials reconsideration requests in the last year that I am pretty sure were more serious than this one (first I'd heard of it, and I said as much), and in the greater climate of censorship attempts in the United States. The ALA State of America's Libraries Report for 2024 indicates a 65% jump in unique titles challenged in 2023 compared to 2022, for a total of 4,240 books. [PDF] That's unique titles, and that's titles that ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom has had reported to them or they've tallied through media reports.
Also in the week before this comedy bit, someone wrote in to our reference service to complain that a graphic novel series for teenagers, Lore Olympus, had themes that were too adult for teenagers and the books needed to be moved to the adult section immediately. The person who handled that e-mail forwarded the complaint to the selector responsible, who sent back a "yeah, I've been looking at that for a while, we'll move it to adult." I mentioned this sequence of events to the teen librarian, whose eyes went up, because she'd read the series and while the elements that were in the complaint were certainly present, they were not graphic in the graphic novel. I did some cursory research and looked for reviews while I was trying to formulate a possible response to the person, and even on a site that I belatedly realized was using a strongly Christian lens to review the materials concluded that the books were for ages 14+. The teen librarian also mentioned that the change might have happened because other libraries in our region file the series in their adult collections when I asked a follow-up about it recently.
( And a lightbulb went on )
There are no pat solutions or universal rules for this situation. The librarians will be wrong. The teachers will be wrong. The experts will turn out to have made shortcuts and let greed and profit twist their results or their advice into something monstrous. You will not always be able to "trust, but verify," as gets quoted by some of the same hucksters and grifters hoping to get something other than your expertise to make the decision for you. Recognize your expertise, and use it for the betterment of humanity. Recognize your limits, and try not to be in a situation where you are past them and will do harm. Admit your mistakes, apologize, and do better.
And if you do want to challenge materials in a library, bring your strongest, most well-supported arguments to the table, find the parts of the policy that support your claim, and lay out your evidence. Treat that decision with the seriousness it deserves, because the people on the other side of your complaint are usually bringing their expertise to the table to inform the ultimate decision that gets made, and they will be unhappy with you if you waste their time, ignore that expertise, or behave in a way that says you're not willing to extend them the trust you reserve to yourself.
There was a comedy piece that happened to me a couple of days ago. One of the people who's part of the actual branch leadership team (as in, people with supervisory authority, rather than a librarian that gets told they can't supervise, but they are occasionally the person in charge) showed me a formal request for reconsideration form where a CD of "essential classics for kids" was being challenged because the person believed that hearing a preschool-age voice chant "Nobody likes me, everyone hates me, guess I'll go eat worms" was absolutely inappropriate for the audience the CD was intended for.
Not "Several of the tracks on this disc have their origins in minstrel shows, blackface performances, and other very racist lyrics." Not "Some of the tracks on this CD sing about children being injured or killed from the decisions they've made around animals or bad food." No, instead the objection is that there's a small voice singing about being hated and eating worms because of it. (The rest of the song is pretty gross-out by lyrics, since it describes the eating of the worms.)
This piece of comedy came after a supervisor at a different location had mentioned they'd dealt with several materials reconsideration requests in the last year that I am pretty sure were more serious than this one (first I'd heard of it, and I said as much), and in the greater climate of censorship attempts in the United States. The ALA State of America's Libraries Report for 2024 indicates a 65% jump in unique titles challenged in 2023 compared to 2022, for a total of 4,240 books. [PDF] That's unique titles, and that's titles that ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom has had reported to them or they've tallied through media reports.
Also in the week before this comedy bit, someone wrote in to our reference service to complain that a graphic novel series for teenagers, Lore Olympus, had themes that were too adult for teenagers and the books needed to be moved to the adult section immediately. The person who handled that e-mail forwarded the complaint to the selector responsible, who sent back a "yeah, I've been looking at that for a while, we'll move it to adult." I mentioned this sequence of events to the teen librarian, whose eyes went up, because she'd read the series and while the elements that were in the complaint were certainly present, they were not graphic in the graphic novel. I did some cursory research and looked for reviews while I was trying to formulate a possible response to the person, and even on a site that I belatedly realized was using a strongly Christian lens to review the materials concluded that the books were for ages 14+. The teen librarian also mentioned that the change might have happened because other libraries in our region file the series in their adult collections when I asked a follow-up about it recently.
( And a lightbulb went on )
There are no pat solutions or universal rules for this situation. The librarians will be wrong. The teachers will be wrong. The experts will turn out to have made shortcuts and let greed and profit twist their results or their advice into something monstrous. You will not always be able to "trust, but verify," as gets quoted by some of the same hucksters and grifters hoping to get something other than your expertise to make the decision for you. Recognize your expertise, and use it for the betterment of humanity. Recognize your limits, and try not to be in a situation where you are past them and will do harm. Admit your mistakes, apologize, and do better.
And if you do want to challenge materials in a library, bring your strongest, most well-supported arguments to the table, find the parts of the policy that support your claim, and lay out your evidence. Treat that decision with the seriousness it deserves, because the people on the other side of your complaint are usually bringing their expertise to the table to inform the ultimate decision that gets made, and they will be unhappy with you if you waste their time, ignore that expertise, or behave in a way that says you're not willing to extend them the trust you reserve to yourself.
