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ABSTRACT:
A review
article focused on 'Fear of words: censorship and the public libraries
of Canada' by Alvin M Schrader. Ottawa, Canadian Library Association
1995. The book, and the issue of censorship on the Internet, pose
challenges for an Australasian library profession which rarely examines
the issues, and which possibly has been lulled into a sense of false
security. There is also a lack of national information, unlike Canada,
on the scope and nature of community pressures to censor materials in
Australian and New Zealand public libraries
Fear or anxiety
about the public uttering or writing of particular words goes much
deeper than a sense of what is polite. Though in English, the words
which cause controversy are those which tend to have either sexual or
scatological connotations, in other languages words such as those for
particular weather phenomena are considered impolite. Freud explored
our superstitions relating to words in Totem and taboo, an
oldie worth reading in conjunction with Alvin Schrader's Fear of
words [1]. We inherited superstition about
uttering particular words
from remote ancestors who believed in the magical properties of those
particular words. To say them out loud was believed to cause certain
things to happen. We see the legacy of earlier magical practices in the
urge to limit access to whole volumes because of single words.
The legacy is also
evident in the erroneous belief that people, particularly if young,
will be recruited to the lifestyle and behaviour depicted in the book.
If we accept that, then we should remove Madeleine from the
shelves on the grounds that it is not in the interest of the family,
the individual or of society to have whole generations of children
packing up and moving to Paris to live with nuns.
The Australian
Library Profession has been curiously silent in the face of the hype,
publicity and consequent draconian legislation implementing restriction
of access to material on the Internet. In general, it has been my
impression, that, with the notable exception of Queensland, challenges
to print materials in libraries, have not been a major issue. Unlike
that of the United States and Canada, the Australasian professional
press rarely examines the issue, possibly because we have been lulled
into a false sense of security.
That may be
because we have no Bill of Rights guaranteeing us the right of free
speech. My first reading of Fear of words was accompanied by a
persistent memory - the tune that would not go away. Way back in 1965,
twenty years before the period of the study which this volume reports,
Tom Lehrer sang a ditty called 'Smut' at the hungry i in San
Francisco. In introducing the song he told the audience:
Unfortunately the
Civil Liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it,
owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of freedom of speech and
stifling of free expression and so on. But we know what's really
involved. Dirty books are fun. That's all there is to it. But you can't
get up in the court and say that , I suppose. It's simply a matter of
freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the
Constitution...
Fear of words
is a scholarly piece of research, notable for its uniqueness as the
first attempt to document the various forms of censorship experienced
by the public librarians of an entire nation. Alvin Schrader was
motivated to conduct the study by the realisation that Canadian public
librarians lack national information on the scope and nature of
community pressures to censor materials housed in Canada's public
libraries, and by t he lack of information on the ways in which public
library staff respond to such pressures.
In addition to the
findings of the study, the volume provides detail of the methodology, a
thoughtful critique of the design of the study and its limitations,
including some valuable hindsi ght insights, serious discussion of the
conceptual framework, a literature review, bibliography and a
collection of statements on intellectual freedom. The writing style
makes for easy reading, the numerous anecdotes are simultaneously
horrifyingly enligh tening and uproariously funny, and the index is
adequate.
That the research
on which it is based is approximately a decade old, is not in itself a
fault, but rather a limitation to the volume's overt usefulness in that
what is shaping up to be the major censorship issue in Australia,
access to the Internet, or to computer-generated and disseminated
materials. Those who turn to this volume for guidance on how to deal
with censorship of electronic information, will find little.
Nonetheless the mater ial about how the profession fought Bill C-54, an
act to amend the Canadian criminal code, and the responses of
individual public libraries to questions on this Act incorporated in
the survey, make salutary reading in the light of the silence of public
li brarians regarding equivalent bills in all states of Australia. The
other limitation, as far as Australian public libraries are concerned,
is the concentration on materials that have been challenged after they
have been incorporated into library collectio ns, presumably because
they met pre-established selection criteria Having had the experience
of being given a direct order not to collect, display or provide any
information on the case against daylight saving prior to the referendum
held in Queensland, I am aware that access to whole classes of material
and information may be denied to significant populations.
But these would be
minor limitations to the thoughtful reader.
The two-page
introduction deserves a fine glass of red and a comfortable chair. It
is a highly entertaining collection of anecdotes about specific
instances which provide snapshots into the minds of those who challenge
books.. My favourite is '...a parent requested the removal of Where
do I come from? by Peter Mayle, which she felt was too explicit and
'damaging to her nine-year-old son, who was going into the priesthood'.
The second chapter
explores the conceptual framework, and the fourth, reviews the limited
amount of previous research. The line between censorship and selection
has proven to be a fuzzy one for a number of librarians and other
commentators on the issue. Censorship advocates commonly assert that
librarians censor all the time and that there is no difference between
censorship and selection. In a sense, as far as electronic information
is con cerned, they may be half-way right. One of the reasons we select
materials is that we have finite resources to purchase and house
library materials. On the Internet, neither of those presents much of a
problem. The other reason we select is to save the ti me of the library
user. When collections have a particular focus and collection is not
universal, it is easier for the user to find what is appropriate to
meet a particular need.
The conceptual
framework chapter concisely explores the issues, and highlights the
fallacies. In particular, the point is made that what has been lacking
in the professional literature is a systematic analysis of precisely
what happens when public library acquisitions elicit strongly negative
reactions from individual members of the community.
Both overt and
covert censorship are discussed, as is pressure to include particular
materials. There are also further chapters devoted to the results of
the survey under each of these head ings and to access policies and
practices.
Three broad
motivations for censorship exist: wowserism, political control and
economic or commercial benefit. The genus wowser [2] has two
species, those, to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, who do not want to tamper
with the natural ignorance of children; and those who linger over every
libidinous passage, then mount the public rostrum to declaim against
the very thing that engaged their attention.
As a whole, the
study turns up more information about wowserism than about political
control or commercial benefit, which may be an indication of the health
of the Canadian democracy. These are issues which I would have liked to
have seen explored more explicitly. Wowserism may limit the
entertainment value of libraries, and may reduce access, particularly
of young people, to needed information about sexuality, but it is very
obvious. Mater ials similar to those challenged or excluded can be
found in newsagents and bookshops. Limiting access to information for
political and economic reasons is less obvious, and can require greater
collusion on the part of the library staff. As George Orwell reminds us
in 1984 he who controls information, controls decisions; he who
controls decisions, controls the future.
While the
questions posed were general enough to include all types of censorship,
in general the responses were about materials challenged on grounds of
obscenity. The checklist of material s provided as a 'control' may have
influenced the respondents to focus on materials challenged on such
grounds. On the other hand, the survey canvassed materials challenged
by library users and members of the community but does not ask about
political or other influence on the written selection policy, or
instructions from those to whom the chief librarian reports. From the
point of view of the Australian public librarian, the volume would be
useful in raising issues, and in providing a methodology for st udying
the phenomenon. Its main value, and the reason that I recommend that it
is required reading for every member of staff in every public library,
is that on virtually every page there is at least one statement or
finding that should hit the thoughtful reader between the eyes like the
proverbial four by two.
If you are
satisfied that your personal practice, as well as your library practice
is unfailingly consistent, you may not need this book. If you are
positive that your library's practice is consistent with library
policy, you may not need this book. If, however, you cannot guarantee
that children are not less well served than adults in this regard, that
you really are committed to intellectual freedom and access, and that
you do not allow i ndividual instances of challenges to increase the
level of conservatism in your selection and acquisition practice, then
you should definitely read this study. The most important finding of
the study was that 65 per cent of the public libraries experience d
direct challenges to their collections over the three years studied.
Almost as important is the finding that there were fewer than 700
challenges, and almost half of these were made by unaffiliated adults
acting on their own behalf. The actions of those few individuals,
however, had the potential to affect access to particular materials by
more than 13 million other Canadians.
As we deal with
the propaganda about filth on the Internet, we should bear this in
mind. The object of propaganda is to repeat a message so often, and in
such a variety of guises, that it b ecomes part and parcel of common
wisdom. The success of propaganda depends on a climate where a feeling
of virtuousness is to be preferred over honest conviction.
The issue of
protection of children is an emotive one. Yet in seeking to protect
children we may inadvertently be increasing their vulnerability to
harm. The public library is virtually the only place a child can
anonymously obtain information about issues of concern. Providing these
children with access to materials which raise issues of abuse and
sexuality is a form of protection. Ignorance increases vulnerability, a
view endorsed by that most conservative of bodies, the General Assembly
of the Church of Scotland. In 1990, the church's Committee on Education
responded to expressions of concern about the content of many of the
books which are readily available to children through bookshops ,
libraries and schools. In the report Children at risk through books
areas of concern in books available to Scottish children were listed as
sex, violence, racial discrimination, blasphemy, occult, political bias
and propaganda, and the very sensi ble and balanced discussion of these
issues challenges conventional wisdom and adult hypocrisy. The report
concludes that censorship of children's reading material is as
dangerous as any other form of censorship, though it expresses the view
that children form a special category in the community, and advises
All books are
intended to widen our experience and sadly in today's world not all
experiences are pleasant. It may, however, be better that children
should encounter such areas of life at second hand through books and
thus be aware of their potential hazards rather than encountering them
at first had without prior knowledge.
It is time we had
a revival of honest conviction about intellectual freedom in Australia,
and time we differentiated quite clearly between that censorship which
seeks to protect children, a nd that which is merely a concern for
commercial viability. Most of all we need to really think through the
issue of access in public libraries, and what that means for librarians
as well as for library users. The right of freedom of speech and press
incl udes not only the right to utter or to print, but the right to
distribute. When material is censored and either suppressed entirely or
access to it limited in some way, the censors (a category which must
always include those who do the actual work of remo ving or changing
access) must know what they are censoring. So, in the strictest sense
of the word the material is not censored, but rather confined to a
special elite. The library profession must ask itself, "How is that
elite selected?"
In Fear of
words Alvin Schrader presents us with food for thought in a rich
collection of information about the inconsistencies of approach in
Canadian libraries, including different ial treatment depending on
subject and format of materials and age of library users.
Highly recommended
for all public librarians.
NOTES
1 Fear of Words: Censorship and the Public Libraries of Canada by Alvin M Schrader. Ottawa,
Canadian Library Association 1995 194pp CA$29.95 ISBN 0 88802 274 3
2 A colloquial Australian term meaning killjoy. It is popularly supposed to be an acronym of
We Only Want Social Evils Remedied, a slogan invented by the Australian politician and
journalist John Norton 1862-1916
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