On censorship A public librarian examines cancel culture in the US

This inspirational defense of intellectual freedom and critical analysis of cancel culture should be required reading for every aspiring and active information specialist. Part of the Speaker's Corner, a series of book-length essays on current topics, the book offers a nuanced and engaging overview of recent censorship trends in the United States followed by components and conditions that can result in cancel culture. Author LaRue certainly has the chops to address these issues, having over 25 years of experience as a public library director plus spending 201618 as the executive director of ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom. Drawing heavily on his own experience (LaRue figures he's dealt with roughly 1,000 library-censorship attempts), he analyzes types of complaints, types of complainers, case studies, outcomes, and lessons learned, identifying effective strategies and helpful resources (board-approved policies, written responses, legislation, allies). He offers insightful profiles of typical adherents of cancel-culture campaigns along with evaluations of their motives, tactics, and backers. LaRue's practical advice will be welcomed by information practitioners who work faceto-face with the public, and his thoughtful observations make this an excellent choice for professional-reading groups. This is a worthy addition to the intellectual-freedom canon.

LaRue (The New Inquisition), a librarian and former president of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, serves up an uneven exploration of the motivations, methods, and results of censorship in regional libraries. Most censorship attempts, he argues, stem from parents' quixotic wish to protect children from "the darker or more complicated sides of adult life" and from "current demographic majorities seeking to suppress writings based on the experiences" of LGBTQ individuals and people of color. Illuminating the challenges librarians face, LaRue notes that public libraries' obligation "to serve the whole community" can lead to conflict, as when he purchased for his Colorado library a children's book "about a man who leaves his wife and child to live with another man" for a mother in a similar situation, who wished to read it with her young son, only for another patron to take offense and rip the book apart. Such stories offer revealing on-the-ground insights into how censorship plays out in individual libraries, but the book's second half loses steam as it offers conventional takes on the importance of public libraries refusing to privilege particular faiths in its selections and the perils of trying to bar problematic books from shelves ("The constitution does not guarantee the right not to be offended"). The results are hit or miss. (Sept.)

I. The Role of the Library My Censored Life   I wish I didn't have so much experience with censorship issues. On the one hand, it's been a handy skill set throughout my library career. On the other, developing that skill meant hanging out with some very angry people. From 1990 to 2014, I served as director of the Douglas County (Colorado) Public Library District. During that time I personally responded to about 250 challenges. By "challenges" I mean public attempts to remove or restrict access to various library resources. By "responding" I mean reviewing the entire resource, consulting library policies (adopted by the citizen Board of Trustees), deciding about the disposition of the challenged item or resource, and communicating that to the complainant. This response is called a Request for Reconsideration process, and it usually ends with an optional appeal to the board. Mostly, the targets of challenges were books. But I also fielded attempts to remove or restrict access to magazines, movies, music, programs, displays, artwork, and digital databases--virtually anything a library provides. The good news: my library district checked out more than eight million items in 2014 alone, and had more than four million visits to our buildings and website. So "challenges" represented only a tiny fraction of public use--which is still true today. The not-so-good news: those challenges often came from extremely vocal and influential people in the community. At the beginning, the complaints originated almost exclusively from the political and religious right. Over time, I saw challenges from parents across the political and religious spectrum, for reasons I'll get to later in this book (see "Why People Challenge Library Resources"). From 2016 to 2018, I worked for the American Library Association (ALA) as the executive director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), which was founded in 1964. Many countries have library associations; however, ALA is the only one to have a dedicated office for resisting censorship. During my tenure at ALA, our office tracked and responded to around a challenge a day. In my almost three years there, this meant exposure to almost nine hundred attempts to block access to information. I also wrote OIF's Field Report summary for all publicly reported challenges the following year. This national dataset differed from my Douglas County experience in several ways, unearthing a more generic panic over national demographic and cultural shifts. In 2022, I took another public library director position, this time on Colorado's Western Slope, which serves six rural communities. In my first eight months, I faced five challenges. Three of them reflected the huge shift in public challenges that the OIF has highlighted since 2020. Rather than being individual complaints, these were coordinated campaigns--often with an overtly partisan, Republican bias--likely designed to rouse the conservative base in time for the 2022 midterm elections. All told, throughout my career as a defender of free speech and public access to knowledge in all its varied forms, I have dealt with more than a thousand attempts by the public to censor the library. It has always been interesting. It hasn't always been fun.   Excerpted from On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture in the U. S. by James LaRue All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.