Public Libraries: Censorship and Intellectual Freedom, a Minoritarian View

(This is a version of a short essay written for one of my classes at the Florida State University College of Information, "Introduction to Information Professions," with Dr. Renee Franklin.)

Censorship, while a problem in all types of libraries, is especially a problem in public libraries. A major role of public libraries is to inform and entertain the entire community in which the public library resides. A political reality of public libraries is that funding of the public library is in the hands of the people who reside in that community. (Some—I contend principally the censors and their allies—view funding as a means of political control.) In censorship cases in public libraries, these two realities are directly in conflict.

A case study in censorship is Alison Bechdel's book Fun Home: a Family Tragicomic. Bechdel's book was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. The review notes that

Bechdel's slim yet Proustian graphic memoir, "Fun Home," must be the most ingeniously compact, hyper-verbose example of autobiography to have been produced. It is a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions, with panels that combine the detail and proficiency of R. Crumb with a seriousness, emotional complexity and innovation completely its own. (Wilsey 2006)

Bechdel's memoir (which I recently read, after checking it out unfettered from my local library) contains discussion of adult themes in a manner appropriate to a young adult, and of a nature that might well prove beneficial to a young adult. As a transgendered formerly female friend of mine, who used to self-identify as a lesbian, puts it, "I grew up in a vacuum, and Alison Bechdel's work was one of the few [queer-positive materials] that was findable... that portrayed its characters as more than just their sexualities.... Her characters are open about what they are." My friend could relate to Bechdel's characters, who [in Bechdel's independent, syndicated comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For] are a full spectrum of the lesbian community, and portrayed aspects of that community—including their disagreements—in a way that no one else did. (E. L. I. Knapp, personal communication, January 17, 2007) (Note)

Fun Home does include explicit content, primarily, images of two women making love. But given the above, Fun Home has serious literary, artistic and political value (this is the Miller test, after the Supreme Court case Miller v. California that currently defines obscenity in the U.S.), and would no doubt pass muster to a higher level of scrutiny.

And yet Fun Home is, predictably, being censored.

"My concern does not lie with the content of the [graphic] novels [Fun Home and Craig Thompson's Blankets]. Rather my concern is with the illustrations and their availability to children and the community," said [Marshall, MO] resident Louise Mills, during a recent public hearing. "Does this community want our public library to continue to use tax dollars to purchase pornography?" (Twiddy 2006)

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the National Coalition Against Censorship jointly sent a letter to the Marshall Public Library's chief librarian, Amy Crump, at the beginning of this controversy, defending Fun Home and Blankets. (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund 2006)

The library board has since removed the two books from circulation while it develops a collections policy. (Twiddy 2006)

There are, as Rubin implies in chapter 9, two models of the library as educator of youth. The first is the majoritarian, control-oriented model, intended to protect young minds from malign influences. The second is the liberal, critical thinking-oriented model, intended to help youth to appreciate the wide variety of perspectives in the world. (Rubin 2004, pp. 399-400) Rubin's models here deal with schools and school library media centers more so than public libraries. But they apply to the youth-oriented services of public libraries equally as well. And historically the former view has been popular in public libraries. As Melvil Dewey famously said, and as Rubin quotes, "'only the best books on the best subjects' were to be collected." (Rubin 2004, p. 190) As American Library Association President Arthur E. Bostwick said in his inaugural address at the 1908 Annual Conference:

‘Some are born great; some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them.’ It is in this way that the librarian has become a censor of literature. . . Books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that teach how to sin and how pleasant sin is, sometimes with and sometimes without the added sauce of impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting the author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, the bookseller to exploit. Thank Heaven they do not tempt the librarian. (Krug 2003, p. 1380)

But what about my friend (and those similarly situated)? What about the next time a Louise Mills decides that someone else's positive role model is her pornography? For the Louise Millses of the world, the solution is simple: do not check Fun Home out of the library. I am not advocating by this that libraries not have priorities when it comes to collection development. Instead, I am advocating two things. First, that libraries firmly maintain the distinction between selection and censorship that Rubin (2004, pp. 189-90) makes: selection is based on reasonably objective criteria, while censorship relies on nothing more than personal bias. And second, that when it comes to selection, that libraries develop collections that reflect their entire community, no matter how marginalized some of its members may be.

The broad goal of serving the library's entire community—including children and young adults who may find such materials especially valuable—is much more important than narrow moralizing, especially in the absence of proof that honest depictions of sexuality are harmful to children or young adults. (As Rubin [2004, p. 192] mentions, there is evidence that depictions of violence may actually injure this population.)

Note: My friend's situation—he is a former lesbian who is now a transgendered male—is becoming increasingly common in the lesbian community, not without controversy. See Vitello (2006).

References

Bechdel, A. (2006). Fun home: A family tragicomic. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. (2006, October 10). CBLDF sends letter to Marshall, Missouri. Retrieved January 17, 2007, from http://www.cbldf.org/articles/archives/000309.shtml

Krug, J. F. (2003). Intellectual freedom and ALA: Historical overview. In M. J. Bates, M. N. Maack & M. Drake (Eds.), Encyclopedia of library and information science [Electronic version]. New York: Marcel Dekker.

Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973).

Rubin, R. (2004). Foundations of library and information science (2nd ed.). New York: Neal-Schulman Publishers, Inc.

Twiddy, D. (2006, December 18). Library patrons object to some graphic novels. [Electronic version]. The Washington Post, pp. C03.

Vitello, P. (2006, August 20). The trouble when Jane becomes Jack. [Electronic version]. The New York Times, pp. 9.1.

Wilsey, S. (2006, June 18). The things they buried [Review of the book Fun Home]. [Electronic version]. The New York Times Book Review, pp. 9.