The Australian Library Journal

Letter to the editor

Roslynn Cousins writes:

Having spent the morning drafting a third round of responses to a library member wanting Attitude magazine removed from the shelves of the Toowoomba City Library. I read Kim Moody's article 'Covert censorship in libraries: a discussion paper' in the May edition of The Australian Library Journal with great interest.

Attitude is a popular glossy magazine tailored for an audience of homosexual men. In 1996/97 it was reviewed for classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification twelve times, and each issue assessed maintained its unrestricted classification. Under our Collection Development Policy, which does preclude restricted materials from our collection, this magazine is an appropriate choice. However my educated, eloquent, petition gathering borrower now believes that our collection for adults should be 'child safe'.

Aside from these happily overt manoeuvres and battles, I have recently come to the conclusion that another form of unthinking censorship thrives in public libraries. I am proud of the work done by the selectors at the Toowoomba City Library to present unpopular views, controversies and materials which they personally find specious or even offensive. But when it comes to weeding and replacement of lost stock we do less well in curbing our personal values.

The high loss rates suffered in the witchcraft and crime areas is no greater than the loss rate of pregnancy books and videos. I expect this is so in any public library. We grit our teeth and replace pregnancy materials, but have decided to stop throwing good money after bad in replacing 'Chopper' Read books and witchcraft titles.

Our suggestion board had a long running debate over witchcraft books, highlights included:

• The accusation from a wiccan that the local Christians were targeting the witchcraft books for theft to 'clean up' the library collection.
• Complaints from a wiccan that we hadn't replaced long overdue witchcraft books when she personally had four of the titles six months overdue on her card.
• My exasperated response that witchcraft books were like a huge black hole sucking up our precious materials budget.

This particular saga ended with a generous donation of books to replace those lost or stolen from a wiccan who cautioned that perhaps it wasn't wise of me to generalise about people who cast spells, and signed off with 'blessed be'.

Reasons, sprinkled with current business-speak, spring to mind. 'This level of loss is not sustainable', trips off the tongue with disturbing ease. Anyone can collect books they like. Librarians develop collections based on values beyond personal consideration. Vigilance is hard work, but then that is why librarianship is so valuable.

I'm off to purchase some more witchcraft, 'Chopper' Read and perhaps even some guitar books.