Whose shelf is in control?

A guest post by an anonymous public librarian

Photo by Anish Lakkapragada on Unsplash

On February 22, 2024, the Education Institute, a professional development workshop service operated by Ontario Library Association of behalf of The Partnership (a collaboration between the provincial and territorial library associations in Canada) presented a webinar titled Shelf Control: A Dialogue on Harm Reduction, Diversity and Freedom to Read. Timed to coincide with Freedom to Read Week in Canada, of which OLA is now a partner, the panel presentation contained several troubling ideas that point to the continued influence of critical social justice theory in Canadian librarianship.

As the title suggests, the broad topic was the “freedom to read” but the focus was on challenges to works focused on matters of identity, representation, and marginalization, not works focused on presenting unpopular or heterodox views. There was a considerable amount of time spent discussing how book challenges in Canada have shifted to organized campaigns, often connected to “parents’ rights” or other groups who are pushing back against what they see as institutional indoctrination connected to efforts to increase diversity and inclusion. While the trend was correctly identified, there was a tone of vilification of these groups and their aims, describing them as “far right” and “anti-LGBTQ” and with an almost sneering reference to “parents’ belief systems.” To make matters worse, one panellist even suggested that Brown parents who protest gender identity content in schools are being misled by the extreme right wing.

At the same time, there was little concern expressed around censorship coming from the forces aligned with the inclusion agenda, and in fact the webinar made no secret of the fact that selection and deselection within libraries, especially school libraries, is often intentionally done to privilege marginalized identity groups at the expense of older material and “white, male, cis” voices. 

Several tensions inherent in this framing of the freedom to read were discussed by the panellists, with panellists drawing a related distinction between how school and public libraries approach their collections. In school libraries, the collections are much smaller and are more focussed on the needs of the curriculum, and therefore deselection of outdated materials is more vigorous and older materials may not be retained. The focus in school libraries, at least in Ontario, is on how materials satisfy the need for equity, taking their cue from the Ontario Human Rights Code as well as the Ontario School Libraries Association’s A Guide to the Selection and Deselection of School Library Resources (2023). 

The comments in this regard from the OSLA representative on the panel were quite pointed. School libraries, she said, must “do the math” of the characters in books in order to ensure proportional representation of equity-deserving identity groups (she did acknowledge the difficulty in doing this when many characters are animals). The panellist also noted that in her role as Instructional Coach to libraries in her school board, her assessments of library collections often earn her the informal title of “equity coach”, using as an example an experience where she told a teacher-librarian that their library’s collection was “obviously” selected by a white male. Acknowledging that some equity-based books do not align with all parents’ belief systems, she suggested that a parent simply “put the book back in the backpack” and send it back to school if their child brings it home.

However, panellists agreed that the same “duty of care” that might apply to schools does not apply to public libraries. The collections can be much broader and responsive to community interests, so there is not the same need to remove older books or non-marginalized voices in order to emphasize marginalized ones. Reflecting the entirety of the community means there will always be material that some consider offensive. The public library representative referred to this as being consistent with “equality under the law” – meaning equality as opposed to equity. However, she added that this is less true in areas outside the book collection, including community development and facility design, where equity concerns may be more prioritized.

A number of questions and comments tried to tease out other tensions. There was discomfort at the idea of “diverse” books displacing classic titles like To Kill a Mockingbird, and an effort to understand how heterodox viewpoints like those of Abigail Shrier or Helen Joyce need to be accessible, if only for the purpose of formulating arguments against them. It was further noted that we need an open marketplace to avoid being trapped in our own echo chambers, and there was an admission that the library community is better at defending intellectual freedom when it deals with ideas favoured in its milieu than with unfavoured ideas.  All of these were excellent and balanced comments, but were still infused with the idea that “we” are of one opinion on these matters and only barely tolerate the opposite viewpoints. One commenter sagely noted that “limiting books limits perspectives” but then made it clear they were referring to the unsafe environment created when “your” experience is erased. 

Perhaps the most telling comment of the event was when the OLA executive director told of her regret when she tells new librarians that sometimes, defending intellectual freedom will not feel like achieving social justice, that defending some books and speakers will feel “gross.”  This was an important admission, but not for the intended reasons. Librarianship rarely correlates with social justice work except in the narrow sense that it means sharing resources in order to provide equal opportunities for everyone. When it comes to the viewpoints provided in library books and other resources, our users are best served by a viewpoint-neutral and apolitical approach to fulfilling needs, even if they are totally “gross” by someone’s personal standards.

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