The opposite of dissemination: suppression

When thinking about potential dissemination issues, the thought of Sports Illustrated, never entered my mind as being a potential ethical issue. In 2007, Sports Illustrated decided to hold back 21,000 copies of their swimsuit edition to classrooms and libraries, which needless to say made a number of librarians angry, after all, a lot of people like Sports Illustrated (especially the swimsuit edition). Instead of letting libraries opt out of receiving the magazine, they made the decision (on their own) to withhold it. It wasn’t until the national news picked up the story did they offer to correct their mistake and invited the neglected libraries to request their copy (Oder, 2007).

Censorship is a concern in all libraries and even in the traditional classroom. A teacher was recently suspended and faced possible criminal charges after he let a minor student select Child of God, a novel written by Cormac McCarthy (a Pulitzer Prize winning author, by the way), off a suggested reading list, because the novel contained controversial and graphic references (Brown, 2007). Some parents welcomed the teacher’s reinstatement. Others did not, and one even filed a police report against the teacher (Brown, 2007). What do these actions say about our society?

Ferris (2007) details the ALA’s approach to censorship as “the suppression of ideas and information that certain persons….find objectionable or dangerous” (p. 33). Regardless of this, it is the role of the library professional to ensure their beliefs, values, opinions, etc do not intercede the mission of providing access to information. Since librarians do have a responsibility to serve as educators and as an information resource, eliminating a book, newspaper, magazine, video, DVD, etc, that opposes their viewpoint or belief, makes them censors. Regardless, if a librarian has a strong opinion on a topic, they cannot hold back a book that is a proponent of that topic (or vice versa). It is against their mission as an information professional to engage in this behavior.

As a child, I remember reading, Are you there god, it’s me, Margaret? This book answered a lot of questions about growing up and cleared up a lot of confusion. This book is (and has been) banned from many school libraries because of its controversial subjects: religion, sex, divorce, and puberty. The last week of September, libraries hold Banned Books Week, to address this censorship threat. Although, many books are more “challenged…not actually banned” (Long, 2006, p. 73). In 2006, the “American Library Association was notified of 547 challenges, up from 459” (Long, 2006, p. 73) the previous year. As long as people have opinions and beliefs, this will also be a challenge to library professionals in all types of libraries and there will always be suppression problems like these.

Citations

Brown, A. K. (2007, October 22). Teacher put on leave after book complaint. Star-Telegram.

Fallis, D.(2007). Information ethics for twenty-first century library professionals. Library Hi Tech, 25 (1), 23-36

Long. S. (2006) Banned Books Week: a celebration of intellectual freedom. New Library World, 107 (1220/1221), 73-75.

Oder, N. Swimsuit Issue Denied to Libraries. Library Journal (1976) v. 132 no. 6 (April 1 2007) p. 14-15