Professional Activity 5: Analyse a peer reviewed journal article - Theme- Censorship

How was the activity relevant to your professional practice?

The activity of reading articles on the theme of censorship, young people and libraries made me think critically about how I feel about the issue myself professionally. As a children’s librarian responsible for Collection Management and Collection Development Policy I needed to have a better understanding of this issue.

What did you learn?

I swayed with each convincing pitch from both sides of the debate. I chose the article by Fiona Duthie as it was double peer reviewed and Australian. On first reading everything seemed straight forward. The author had all but convinced me of serious flaws in the rigidity of professional codes of practice, such as ALIA’s Statement on Free Access, ALA’s anti censorship core values, IFLA’s principles of intellectual freedom and uninhibited access to information. It appeared that the Internet had made the moral codes redundant anyway through widespread, generally accepted use of filters in public libraries. (thus restricting access to information). But by taking a critical review approach I became less convinced of the out datedness of the codes despite Duthie’s compilation of academic writing on the subject.

Were any gaps in your knowledge revealed?

I had always been aware of ALA codes on access to information but I had not really thought deeply about this issue. Duthie's article did succeed in summarising the issues  but I also enjoyed reading  some historical context that Duthie’s work lacked. Examples of ridiculous censorship attempts I read about in other articles, made me start to have a sense of the real importance of the ethical standpoint of intellectual freedom to our profession.

 I agree with keeping books with disturbing, violent, really scary content away from very small children, and books that contain extreme bad language, drug use, sociopathic, or psychopathic behaviours away from  children. 
I admit I have removed a book from shelves once because of the graphic depiction of animal abuse and suffering. The Great Bear by Libby Gleeson is such a dark story. I didn’t realise that other Librarians had also reviewed this picture book as inappropriate for little ones till I looked it up now.  I wasn't the only one who had found this book, although classified as a picture book, to be too disturbing for small children to be confronted with such human cruelty, sadness and violence. 

Obviously children do rely on adults, librarians and teachers to shield them from harmful content and inappropriate material. Anne Scott Macleod asks if the concept of intellectual freedom even compatible with the concept of childhood (Macleod, 1994, p 174) Childhood is a time of innocence and vulnerability where adults make serious decisions on matters of child welfare.

Another things I discovered in this process is that as much as I enjoy learning and reading about a topic relevant to my work, I am not a happy academic and have not enjoyed referencing and regurgitating information succinctly. My motivation to learn is lessened by the necessity to aim for marks in an assignment, working in the industry already means my motivation is strictly for knowledge and to better myself, not to gain employment. I will need to have a more disciplined approach in the next subject if I am to begin to enjoy working towards my masters.

How might you fill those gaps?

I think that after this activity the issue is now on my radar. If someone now asked me what was my view on censorship it would depend on the item and the motivation to have it censored.  My idea of what is appropriate and not appropriate is subjective. The codes remove subjectivity and say it is not up to an individual or library to decide what people even children should read or not get to read. This scenario leaves children to develop their own opinions and belief system by being exposed to a range of ideologies. 

I have concluded that most Children and School Librarians do make censorship decisions all the time but they may not be overt. They may be hidden in selection decisions or even in refusal to recognise subject gaps in collections. As an example close to home, I came to this role after 2 very religious children’s librarians lead by another outspoken religious Team Coordinator.  A bias had clearly formed in Junior Non Fiction Collection during that 8 year period. There was not a single book on evolution or Darwin when I joined the staff, but yet there were a disproportionate number of books (around 20 titles) in the section on Saints, Christianity and Western religions. I believe that if Junior books on evolution had been consciously omitted that it was absolutely unethical.
The ALIA Statement on Professional Conduct encourages 'intellectual freedom and the free flow of information and ideas". All Public Library staff should follow this code.

References

ALIA Statement on free access to infomation (2007). Retrieved from www.alia.org.au/about-alia/policies-standards-and-guidelines/statement-free-access-information

ALIA Statement on Professional Conduct (2001). Retrieved from www.alia.org.au/policies/

American Library Association (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ 
 

Duthie, F.(2010). Libraries and the Ethics of Censorship. Australian Library Journal

IFLA Statement on Libraries and Intellectual Freedom (1999). Retrieved from www.ifla.org/publications/ifla-statement-on-libraries-and-intellectual-freedom

Macloed, A. (1994). American Childhood: essays on Children's Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1994.