Banned books

The whole carry-on about Sarah Palin and the local librarian reminds me of my experience with censorship in my long years atoning for the sins of a former life by serving as a library director.

The politicians never took any interest in the books in the library. They didn't read them. I don't believe they read the reports I sent them. They didn't even have library cards. Only the inmates of these small towns noticed we had books, some of which they objected to.

The complaints were bizarre. One man poked his head around the corner of my office and dropped a copy of The Return of the Native on my desk, remarking that it was the dirtiest book he had ever read. He must have led a sheltered life.

In order to forestall citizen's complaints, we had a Procedure. I found that a Procedure, in writing, was a good way to cope with complaints and other problems. We had Procedures for every eventuality--unruly customers, opening and closing the library, checking out books, dealing with emergencies, etc. They were kept in a notebook entitled Policies and Procedures.

So, as part of this Procedure, we had this form which we asked our patrons to fill out if they wanted something removed from the shelves. No-one who complained ever wanted to fill out the form, so the matter usually died there. Most of the books people objected to were not obscene or objectionable; someone just had an aversion to a particular book for reasons of their own. I think some of them just wanted to talk to somebody.

Librarians love to talk about Censorship, but censorship was not my main problem with books in the library. Our main problem was donations. Ideally, we didn't want any. We particularly didn't want any copies of encyclopedias more than three years old or with volumes missing. Filthy or moldy books, books with pages missing or covers torn off, books whose contents were escaping their bindings--you get the picture. Nix. No. Nada. Non quiero. We of course had a policy stating what sort of books we would accept, but no-one ever read it. People just brought in books, left them in the bookdrop, or deposited them at our door if we were closed. It was a bad idea making them take them home again, so we quietly disposed of them.

Donated periodicals were a lesser problem, as sometimes one of our issues was missing and we could fill in our collection. But National Geographic! It's an excellent publication beyond a doubt, but we had so many of them that we gave them to school kids to illustrate their reports.

Other problem donations were books people were eager to add to our collection: books about little-known religions; books denying that John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, hate-filled tomes blaming all the world's problems on the Jews, stuff like that. We had a Policy for these, thank God. It generally involved pitching them.

And there were the books donated under certain conditions: they must be kept in the reference collection, or the children's collection, or behind glass. We didn't want them either.