NOTE: I edited this to clarify WHY I think parents have a right to censor (i.e., monitor and help in selection of) their children's reading material. I am NOT pro-censorship, but parents DO have a right to do so, and we need to acknowledge that, even if we disagree with their choices. This right extends ONLY to their children, no one else's.
On December 13 and 14, the Georgia Department of Education will hold a meeting at which they will announce their decision on the fate of Harry Potter in the state’s school libraries. As those of you have followed my coverage of this story know, Laura Mallory first tried to get the books pulled at the school level, where she failed, and later at the county level and is now taking her fight to the state.
Miss Mallory really doesn’t know how librarians select books, nor do most people. As someone who has worked in two large public library system and one inner city public school system, I DO know something about this subject. I have an M.L.S, and I’ve ordered books for a mini-branch, as well as participated in ordering for larger branches; I’ve also ordered for the school library in which I was the sole librarian.
Every library or school system has a set of standards and book selection policy in writing. It’s there for two reasons: to clarify what we do, and to cover our collective ass when people like Laura Mallory lose their few marbles and go off about some innocuous book. There is also a procedure in place on how to handle complaints from parents, though generally if the book got good reviews, it stays on the shelf even if the Laura Mallorys scream their heads off.
We rely heavily on three factors in book selection.: demand from the public and advance reviews, plus maintaining a balanced collection. Armed with Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal and School Libraries, we pore over the list of books sent us by the book jobber (a distributor who coordinates buying form many publishers, thus saving us the nightmare of having to order from each publisher separately), and librarians make recommendations to the branch manager who makes the final call. In school libraries, we usually make the choices ourselves, since there is generally only one librarian. This insures we don’t miss out on any great books.
Some books were automatic buys. If it was written by an author whose books tended to go bestseller—Stephen King or John Grisham or Nora Roberts, say—we bought multiple copies because the name of the game is circulation figures, and these books would go out and raise the circulation figures. I’m not a huge fan of Jackie Collins, but people want to read her, and I’d be stupid not to buy her books., even if I find them unreadable. What books become automatic buys will depend greatly on the ethnic and religious makeup of your patrons.I worked in one branch which was mostly Jewish, and we bought every novel dealing with the Jewish immigrant experience or the Holocaust. Another branch was mostly Irish, And Andrew Greeley’s books were very popular. Down here, anything dealing with the South or with the Bible is a Must Buy, and we have a lot of Inspirational fiction; ditto anything by local politicians, James Dobson, or other Big Names in the Religious Right, which explains why we have many copies of Zell Miller’s ranting tome.
Another category we bought were books that were likely to get a lot of publicity because they were controversial. While he makes me gag, I would have to buy O’Reilly’s latest rant. Ditto Coulter. In school and public libraries we often buy fluff –like the Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine or the Babysitters’ Club series—because kids love them, even if the reviews are less than stellar. School libraries exist to teach kids library and research skills and to get them hooked on reading and Harry Potter lures non-readers into reading.
Why buy stuff that’s not very good? Because we live and die by circulation figures in public libraries, and by class visits and circ number in school libraries. That means giving the public what they want. Gone are the days when librarians turned up their noses at books that weren’t of sufficiently high quality (though my old grad school roommate, also a librarian, tells me her library refused to order the Stine series until parents yelled loud enough; the same used to be true of Nancy Drew and the Oz books, but most of us have gotten over the literary snobbery). We need to keep the circ numbers rising, so we buy lots of stuff we might not like ourselves.
The same method helps us to decide what non-fiction to buy—what people will want to read. Hence my willingness to order O’Reilly and Coulter’s latest tomes—conservatives will demand them. But there’s another thing to consider when we order non-fiction, and that is whether our collection is balanced, presenting all points of view on controversial topics. ALL libraries should have as their goal not only meeting the public’s desires, but also presenting all sides on issues—even if we personally disagree with one side, many of our readers will too. This means we buy books on Iraq from hawks and doves, Republicans and Dems, liberals and conservatives. We buy book that are pro-choice and pro-life. We buy books that are by members of the Christian Right and critical of them—in fact, when it comes to religion, you should be especially careful to respect diversity (my branch doesn’t do this on Wicca; there’s one bad encyclopedia of witchcraft and two anti-Wiccan tracts by religious Right nutburgers). We do this because libraries are used by students for term papers and by people who merely ant to know all about an issue. In other words, like the government of which we are a part, we are NEUTRAL.
This need for balance is what the Wannabe Censors don’t get. We don’t just cover one point of view. We cover the spectrum of attitudes, so long as the sources have some credibility (no, we would likely NOT buy a book lauding Hitler because the writer is unlikely to have any credibility with historians, but we might buy a book about Holocaust deniers). We buy works of fiction that bore us or appall us because patrons want to read them Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind books make me want to vomit (I made an attempt to read on early on)—but every library SHOULD have a copy of them because they are in high demand. I find Falwell and Robertson and their pals disgusting, but I’d buy their books, because the Christian community would want them, and they pay taxes just like the rest of us. My library branch here has Harry Potter because many of the kids want to read them, despite a very a large number of fundy patrons. For them, they have a huge Inspirational (translation: Christian fiction) section.
Unfortunately censors don’t care about balance or meeting the needs of a community larger than themselves. They only care of ridding the world of anything that offends them. They want to dictate to the rest of us what we are allowed to read and think, because they know they are right, and the rest of us are wrong, including the SCOTUS which has upheld freedom of expression many, many times.
Oddly, I am not wholly opposed to parental censorship. Parents have the right, perhaps even the duty, to monitor their children’s viewing, listening and reading materials. Some of you will call this censorship, and, in a way, it is, but it’s also a big part of the job of parenting to do so. You are there to guide your children and to teach them values and ethics and, yes, your faith, if you have one. While I frequently disagree with the values I see people imparting, I also recognize that it’s not my place to interfere—even if that is exactly what the censors want to do to everyone else. I suspect that the reason people like Mallory and the Parents Television Council want to take off the shelf and the air waves anything that they dislike or don’t want their kids exposed to, is that it’s simpler for them if kids don’t have a choice. If shows that don’t reflect their values are on, or books they dislike are in the library, they have to actually PARENT: check the kids’ reading matter, learn to use the V Chip or parental controls, get off their duff and get INVOLVED actively with their kids. And that is much more work than merely complaining in canned e-mails they only have to sign and then hit send.
Note, I said THEIR children, no one else’s. Ms. Mallory has every right to deprive her kids of the sheer fun of reading Harry Potter (which has not damned thing to do with Wicca; been a Wiccan for 30+ years and Hogwarts has nothing to do with my religion). Were the series given as an assignment without an alternative choice, I’d back her right to request a different books for her kids. But she oversteps her authority when she tries to tell other parents how to raise their children, and what their kids should read. And that is where she needs to sit down and shut her holier-than-thou, semi-literate, know-it-all, annoyingly shrill mouth. And this is the crucial point that people like her fail to understand—that rightwing Christians don’t get to decide what’s acceptable for the rest of us.
I was lucky. My parents kept an eye on what I read and watched, but I read pretty much whatever I wanted—which included lots of stuff supposedly too advanced for my age and theoretical comprehension level (Mom felt if I could read it and understand it, it was OK) Little Women at 8, Gone With the Wind and other 1950s’ historical novels at age 10, Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming at 12, and anything else that caught my eye. I wouldn’t censor my own kids’ (had I any) reading choices myself—but that is MY choice, and I have to recognize that other parents probably do feel differently. I wish parents wouldn’t censor, but I also realize that monitoring reading and viewing material is their right. I suspect if my non-existent children started developing a fondness for O’Reilly, I’d start taking to him about what he was reading—and suggest better books.
(NOTE: I deleted the diary a while ago to substantially rewrite this section after someone took offense a the idea that I think parents have a right and perhaps a duty to do this. I am NOT pro-censorship, but I do wish parents would actually get off their asses and become involved instead of demanding libraries remove books they dislike and networks cancel shows they don’t like).
Oh, on the subject of obscenity—we don’t buy porn or even erotica, generally. Not mind you, because librarians are pruny prudes, but because the books go out once and never come back, and we’ve thrown away 20-30 dollars of a shrinking book budget! It’s finances, not morality, that keep sexually oriented books other than steamy romances off the shelves—and I happen to write erotica myself! Lots of fairly graphic romances on the shelves, but I’ve yet to see any "erotic romance’ which is far more graphic, uses the language real people use in bed, and may include honest and accurate depictions of kink.
As soon as I hear how the GDOE rules, I’ll post a commentary here. I sure wish I had Laura Mallory’s email, because I’d love to send this to her. But while this will likely be the last we hear of her, I am certain as night follows day, that there will always be someone who’ll come along to pick up the fallen banner of "Save Our Children". James Dobson and his ilk we have always with us. And I have to wonder what Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter who didn’t suffer hypocrites gladly, would make of what they do in His name.