My neighbor the librarian made me reconsider something

She told me her library quietly stopped buying 12 specific nonfiction titles last year because of pressure from a local school board member. Said they just labeled them as 'out of stock' and moved on. Ever notice how small censorship like that flies under the radar?

3 comments

3 Comments

aaron6771mo agoMost Upvoted

Actually... I see it a little different from you Mark. The thing is, 12 books is a small number but it's still 12 books somebody decided to kill without telling anyone. That's how small censorship grows - one book at a time until it adds up. And the proof thing is tricky because the whole point of doing it quietly is that nobody can prove it easily. The librarian told her neighbor straight up, that's about as close to proof as you get in these situations unless somebody records a conversation. Plus librarians have ethics codes about not caving to pressure, so if one admits they did it, that's a pretty big deal. Maybe those books weren't flying off the shelves but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be available for the one person who needs them.

mark6761mo ago

Honestly I gotta call this one out a bit. The whole "quietly stopped buying 12 specific titles" thing sounds real specific but where's the proof? I mean librarians are public employees they deal with all kinds of pressure from all kinds of people. A school board member complaining about a book doesn't mean the library caved. Could be they just didn't restock because nobody was checking them out. I've seen this happen with my local library where they phased out old cookbooks nobody touched but nobody called it censorship. And 12 books out of thousands? That's a drop in the bucket. I'm not saying it never happens but this feels like making a mountain out of a molehill.

beth_hart681mo ago

Oh man, I gotta say I'm with aaron677 on this one. I used to be the type who thought "oh it's just a few books, what's the big deal" but this post honestly made me stop and think. You don't need a stack of proof when the librarian herself told her neighbor that's what happened, that's about as real as it gets. And yeah, 12 books out of thousands seems small, but it's the quiet part that gets me. If nobody noticed those 12, next year it's 20, then 50, and suddenly you've got a whole section of topics that just "happen" to not be available anymore.