Pflugerville librarian: You can't ban their books and read yours too
There is no denying that concentrated efforts to ban books and other library materials about people of color and LGBTQIA+ people are on the rise in Texas. I could detail here why targeting information that is important for the representation and development of these minority groups is immoral, but with that in mind I will instead elaborate on the perils of banning in general.
Perhaps you have casually heard the sayings “libraries are a place for everyone” and “censorship is a slippery slope,” but not given them much thought. I want to offer you a more in-depth interpretation of what these may mean. When we say “libraries are a place for everyone, we do mean everyone and that even includes people library staff disagree with. It is a major part of our principles and ethics as library workers and a legal matter of free speech that we don’t remove books or other materials from our libraries for political or biased reasons.
No matter who is browsing through a school or public library’s collection, they should find things they will like (that other people might hate), and they should find things they will hate (that other people might like). You cannot have one without the other because these are public libraries and libraries in public schools, and that means we provide materials for everyone in the public. Everyone ought to know that we are not the “private library only for a few people that only has things they like and nothing that will challenge their views or upset them.” There are people in our community who disagree with each other, and they all have a right to find what they are looking for through our collection.
As one of your cataloging librarians, I am no exception to this rule. I come across new books that I am glad to see enter our collection and I also come across some books that frankly make me want to throw them in the trash. As a matter of integrity and dedication to the institution I work for, however, I promise that those books don’t end up in the trash. They go on our shelves along with all the books I like because it is not my place to tell our guests that they shouldn’t read or watch something made available to the public if that is what they choose. The existence of books I dislike in our library guarantees a place in our collection for the books that I am happy to see, and that is something that everyone should realize applies to their favorite books, movies and other library resources. It’s all delicately balanced.
Thus, censorship becomes a slippery slope because of precedence. Precedence, especially in legal terms, refers to the idea that if something has been deemed justified once, there is little reason why it should not happen again in similar circumstances. People who want to see books banned think they can have their cake and eat it too; they think they can ban the books they hate and have a “public” library filled only with books they like, and I’m telling them now that it won’t work out for them. If they manage to force a library to ban books they hate, what’s going to stop another group of people from calling their favorite things “obscene” and having those thrown out too? I mean, they’ve already said it was OK to ban books, so why not their books? Opinions are personal and no single viewpoint is universally shared, so it’s all or nothing.
Compromise the integrity of the public library and the whole structure collapses. Yes, there will be no books you hate, and there will be no books you like, because there will be no more library. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that there is a good portion of anti-education/anti-intellectual individuals in the book-banning crowd who think that that would be some kind of dream come true. But if that’s their sentiment, then I think we really need to ask ourselves if they should be the ones we listen to when we’re contemplating how to run a library.
David Ruano is the technical services and cataloging librarian at the Pflugerville Public Library.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Pflugerville librarian: You can't ban their books and read yours too
