The Higher Power of Librarians

by PaulaG on Mar 1, 2007 at 12:48 PM

Perhaps you've been following the controversy created by the Newbery Medal-winning children's book The Higher Power of Lucky. Described as a poignant "story about a girl who fears being abandoned by her legal guardian ," the book also happens to contain the word "scrotum". While the use of the word was clinically accurate and non-sexual, the mere appearance of it was enough to create a hooha, with some librarians proclaiming that they would not allow the book in their libraries. Did I already mention that the book won a Newbery Medal? All of this set off a typical "down with censorship v. save the children" battle royale, with author and internet stud Neil Gaiman weighing in on the anti-censorship side of things. Neil's comments prompted many responses from beleaguered librarians, but I thought this letter from a librarian in Ohio recounting her library's battle against the Forces of Evil (a.k.a. the Christian Coalition), was worth spreading around. The whole story is after the jump. All I can add after reading the story is God Bless the Librarians.

I have some first hand experience in dealing with the maelstrom that can engulf a library system when it is targeted by a group of "concerned citizens" trying to

save children from books and the internet and ideas and information in general.

A decade ago, my library system had books on our shelves with such scandalous titles as It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual

Health, Heather Has Two Mommies, and various titles on witchcraft and other such dangerous ordnances. Several "concerned citizens" began to check the books out and

not return them - in order to save someone else's child from being infected by them.

At the same time, we (rather naively) introduced the internet into our libraries thinking that it might be A Good Thing. We did this just as we were trying to pass an operating tax levy. The group turned its attention from the books to the Internet and our supposed pandering of porn to kids - though they did not forget about the books, of course.

And, all hell broke loose. Our local group of concerned citizens hooked up with the larger Christian Coalition and made it their life's ambition to defeat our operating levy - which would have crippled our library system. They became amazingly organized

seemingly overnight with the help of the Coalition.

I walked out of our main branch one day to find several van loads of people carrying picket signs and descending on our building. There were many children with the group and some of them were given picket signs and sent out to rally cars driving by to "Honk

if you hate Library Porn" and "Unsafe for Kids". The other picketing parents sent their kids into our children's department for us to baby-sit for the next several hours - while they tried to rally community support against us. (The irony was not lost on us.)

Caught flat footed, our library system began to scramble to try to deal with the situation. (The net was very new to us and many of us were not as well versed in it as we should have been.) We formed an internal Internet Safety Task Force (belatedly, yes)

to figure out just what we, as a system, SHOULD be doing.

One man in the group called in the local television stations and showed up at our main branch and began to ask children in the library about all the porn that they were finding on our computers and asking them to show him how to find it. When staff told him

that he could not ask the kids to do this, he began to troll for porn himself in front of the cameras (and kids) - going to a list of website addresses that, as luck would have it, he had memorized. The group was asked to leave as they were creating a disruption.

It played out on the television news over the next week under the usual lurid teasers with which the local news has so much fun.

This same man began to show up at our staff building entrances and hand out copies of porn that he had downloaded from the net (at his house not at ours) to staff exhorting them to resign "if they were true Christians". He created a website and a newsletter dedicated to the "overthrow of the library pornographers".

Picketers began showing up at our bookmobile locations, our other library branches, our Board of Trustees meetings, etc. We actually had to stage a public debate that drew several hundreds of people where we allowed the concerned citizens and forum to

voice their concerns and tried to explain our position. (We had come up with one by then.)

Our election yard signs began to disappear and be replaced with "No Library Porn" signs.

We printed lots of informational materials re: our policies of internet access (we created a children's website for some of the computes that defaulted to yahooligans, we filtered a few comps - but left it up to the patron to decide if he or she wanted to use that one (yes, even the kids), we came up with what we think is a fair policy for public computer use (yes, we did decide not to allow "porn" via library comps - we basically limited nips and crotches - yes, these were strange meetings to be in for a bunch of librarians), we encouraged parents to go to the library WITH their children instead of just dropping them off, we held internet safety training sessions for patrons of all ages, we talked and talked and talked to our patrons. And, many people "got it".

But, some didn't...several of our staff had the gut wrenching experience of sitting through religious services while the pastor or priest condemned the library and all the library staff for "not protecting children" and told the congregation to "send them a

message, vote down the library levy."

Others of us found ourselves sitting in dentists' chairs with our mouths propped open or wearing paper gowns at doctors' offices and listening to these professionals asking us why we wouldn't protect children. This didn't just happen to those of use holding an MLS who had had a bit of training on how to handle such things...this happened to all of us from the youngest pages up to the secretaries in our main office to our elderly payroll lady.

Every single staff received a letter at our homes telling us that if we continued to work for such a godless organization, we would go to hell. Even our children were questioned at school by their teachers!

It was like the world was burning...

At the same time, we came under intense scrutiny from the larger library community. We were condemned by some for "caving" when we gave patrons the option of using a filtered machine and applauded by some for finding a workable compromise. Most, I think, tucked their heads down and were very happy that it wasn't them...many learned from the things that we had done wrong - and right. So did we.

And...we got through it...our levy didn't fail (and, in fact, a few years later, we passed a 42 million dollar bond issue to build new libraries and improve the ones that we have). We figured out an internet policy that works for our system and our rather rural, small town communities - Amish patrons mingle with soccer moms and business people, and old school farmers, while still supporting intellectual freedom.

The Christian Coalition got distracted by something else and our local concerned citizens group burned itself out and drifted away.

We won ALA's Library of the Year award the next year and for the past five years, have placed in the top five libraries in the country for our size. We did programs at ALA national and regional conferences so that other libraries could learn from our experience.

And, we keep ordering replacement copies of It's Perfectly Normal, and books about Wicca and graphic novels and whatever else...and, yes, we did order The Higher Power of Lucky and expect many copies to arrive at any moment. Hell...we are even getting

the audio.

I wouldn't wish our experience on my worst enemy, but...it does help to put things into perspective.

We are not special. We are just ordinary library people. We are human - we falter and stand up again. We learn and do better the next time. There are thousands of us all over the country - all over the world. And, we are just doing our job, because defending intellectual freedom is just as much a part of our job as reading to third graders and helping people find American Gods on CD.

We will not trade our ideals for what is easy and "practical". We will not trade them for a single word. Our eyes are open and it takes more than an abused scrotum to make us blink.

I thank you for your indulgence and your patience and your kind words re: libraries and librarians in the past. Being a librarian trumps *almost* every other job in the world - if you ever get tired of writing (I think that only one that trumps librarian-ing) come on

over - you'd be welcome in the cult...uh...I mean professon. :0)

Be well!

Lynn Wiandt

Manager, Seville Community Library

Medina County District Library (Ohio)

Here is one of my favorite quotes about librianship.

It is from a novel by Larry Beinhart called "The

Librarian".

"Librarians don't make a lot of money, more than

poets, but not so much, say, as your more successful

panhandlers, so our ideals are important to us and the

love of books and the love of knowledge and the love

of truth and free information and letting people

discover things for themselves and let them, oh, read

romance novels or detective novels, whatever they

want, and giving poor people internet access."