Collection librarians can be the second line of censors, behind publishers and book distributors. Libraries can lack courage. The final nail in the coffin for me was when libraries were not deemed essential during early days of the lockdowns. Had they not fought for years to market themselves as essential? I could not find one public library director that fought to stay open, so much fear.
Public libraries generally defer to larger governing bodies. I was a Director during that time and also had to keep in mind health and safety concerns of the general public as well as employees. I will say that most libraries started offering "take-out" as soon as it was feasible.
Nice piece! Looks like the Bloomingdale library did consider and eventually acquire Epoch Times after all -- check out the September/October 2022 entries. Thank you for the worthy discussion fodder for my next Collection Development class in the fall!
Thank you for the update AND you just encouraged me to try another search in WorldCat and with the new search I was able to find an entry that lists 83 libraries so I will correct the piece.
Interesting article. I can see it is a minefield for librarians to navigate. As someone who has read primary sources on a number of diverse religions over the years, I can see some big difficulties in defining "cult", "sect" and "church". If I were asked I would probably do it in an evolutionary psychology sense, or a political sense. "Church" being a dominant religious organization makes sense. "Sect" being a non-mainstream church with similar background basis. "Sect" is basically going to be "out-group". That's really all they are - whether they abuse their members or not. You can easily argue that all existent churches have at some point abused their members one way or another. Virtually all have been apocryphal and have extensive eschatological theories, excepting Buddhism, Hinduism and maybe Jainism. I can't think of a religion that didn't start out as a sect - at least, I assume they were perceived that way by their original contemporaries. Christianity certainly was viewed that way in the first few centuries. Islam ditto. Buddha must have seemed like a nutcase to people around him at the time. How does that expression go? "History is written by the victors"? Churches are the victors.
This sentence was interesting: "the Library determined that this resource currently does not meet the criteria for purchase due to its known lack of accuracy of information and reliability issues as an information resource". I think if this was a literal requirement for library materials that they would have to be shedding vast quantities of their books and magazines. Is the Bible accurate? The Koran? Global Warming Theory? Club of Rome? The Population Bomb? I could go on and on as I'm sure you could even better. There are hundreds of books which libraries mostly carry that are full of inaccuracies as well as clear fictions purporting to be fact. It doesn't seem healthy to me for libraries to be arbiters of accuracy of materials that are "popular" {beyond one request, say). I don't know much about the Epoch Times, but it seems like if there are more than one or two people who want to read it and a library has budget for it, they probably ought to carry it. The whole idea of libraries originated from groups of residents pooling money to purchase books in common because it was inefficient and expensive for everyone to have to buy their own books. But I am probably naive about all the considerations librarians must make.
I've used your same arguments in the past (using examples of The Bible or various diet books such as Atkins) to point out that libraries cannot possibly verify the "truth" of every book in the collection.
I also agree that Buddha might well have been seen as a "nutcase" at the time and that could probably be said of all major religions.
Collection librarians can be the second line of censors, behind publishers and book distributors. Libraries can lack courage. The final nail in the coffin for me was when libraries were not deemed essential during early days of the lockdowns. Had they not fought for years to market themselves as essential? I could not find one public library director that fought to stay open, so much fear.
Public libraries generally defer to larger governing bodies. I was a Director during that time and also had to keep in mind health and safety concerns of the general public as well as employees. I will say that most libraries started offering "take-out" as soon as it was feasible.
Nice piece! Looks like the Bloomingdale library did consider and eventually acquire Epoch Times after all -- check out the September/October 2022 entries. Thank you for the worthy discussion fodder for my next Collection Development class in the fall!
Thank you for the update AND you just encouraged me to try another search in WorldCat and with the new search I was able to find an entry that lists 83 libraries so I will correct the piece.
Interesting article. I can see it is a minefield for librarians to navigate. As someone who has read primary sources on a number of diverse religions over the years, I can see some big difficulties in defining "cult", "sect" and "church". If I were asked I would probably do it in an evolutionary psychology sense, or a political sense. "Church" being a dominant religious organization makes sense. "Sect" being a non-mainstream church with similar background basis. "Sect" is basically going to be "out-group". That's really all they are - whether they abuse their members or not. You can easily argue that all existent churches have at some point abused their members one way or another. Virtually all have been apocryphal and have extensive eschatological theories, excepting Buddhism, Hinduism and maybe Jainism. I can't think of a religion that didn't start out as a sect - at least, I assume they were perceived that way by their original contemporaries. Christianity certainly was viewed that way in the first few centuries. Islam ditto. Buddha must have seemed like a nutcase to people around him at the time. How does that expression go? "History is written by the victors"? Churches are the victors.
This sentence was interesting: "the Library determined that this resource currently does not meet the criteria for purchase due to its known lack of accuracy of information and reliability issues as an information resource". I think if this was a literal requirement for library materials that they would have to be shedding vast quantities of their books and magazines. Is the Bible accurate? The Koran? Global Warming Theory? Club of Rome? The Population Bomb? I could go on and on as I'm sure you could even better. There are hundreds of books which libraries mostly carry that are full of inaccuracies as well as clear fictions purporting to be fact. It doesn't seem healthy to me for libraries to be arbiters of accuracy of materials that are "popular" {beyond one request, say). I don't know much about the Epoch Times, but it seems like if there are more than one or two people who want to read it and a library has budget for it, they probably ought to carry it. The whole idea of libraries originated from groups of residents pooling money to purchase books in common because it was inefficient and expensive for everyone to have to buy their own books. But I am probably naive about all the considerations librarians must make.
I've used your same arguments in the past (using examples of The Bible or various diet books such as Atkins) to point out that libraries cannot possibly verify the "truth" of every book in the collection.
I also agree that Buddha might well have been seen as a "nutcase" at the time and that could probably be said of all major religions.
Oh -- of course! I didnt even think of the whole health and self-help fields.