Censorship

Are you ready for another dip into the pool of the ethics of librarianship? Come on in, the water is fine.

Today’s post is about the key role librarians play in fighting censorship.

Since I have been referencing the code of ethics of the American Library Association, I feel as I should quote from it now:

We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor
library resources.

Like the other ethics statements of the ALA, this one is broad, and is meant to be a general guideline for librarians. I think one can look at this statement in two areas: traditional and electronic items in the library’s collection.

The traditional battleground for this fight has been books with what individuals deemed “objectionable content.” This includes classics such as Catcher in the Rye, and Ulysses. Librarians are expected, and actively do, fight against censorship of any item in their collection. Sometimes, these efforts are successful, and other times they are not. Much of what librarians must do in situations where items in the library collection are challenged is juggle disparate and competing interests. I’ll go more into this juggling in a moment, but allow me to acknowledge a very controversial topic that fits nicely under this censorship heading: internet filters.

Filtering of internet resources is a very controversial topic in the overall concept of censorship. According to the quote I gave you above, librarians should fight against this filtering. It’s not as simple as that, though. There are many issues at play.

The first issue that comes to mind is funding. Federal, state, and local technology funding is tied to the use of internet filters, and many libraries would be unable to provide free internet access without this finding assistance.

The second issue that occurs to me is that librarians do not practice their profession in a void: they are also members of the community in which they work, as well as individuals. Each of these identities brings with it a different set of ethics. One’s personal set of ethics might conflict (and they commonly do on internet filtering) with the code of ethics of librarians. Nevertheless, in the library, you are expected to adhere to that code of ethics. That’s why those ethics are very broadly defined, and why I hesitate to say that all librarians do exactly what is stated in the ethics code all the time.

However, in general first amendment rights have no greater friends than librarians. And, to me, I like that.

Jason Dean