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Idaho Librarian |
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ON BITING THE
GOVERNOR’S HAND The legislature seems reluctant to believe that an educated citizenry may be the secret to bringing prosperity back to Idaho; it persists in acting as though potatoes, minerals and logs are the keys to a bright future, and continues to starve schools and libraries. The Governor, intelligent enough to recognize that the state’s educational institutions, at all levels, have been brought to the point of dysfunctionality, has proposed a sales tax increase and the restoration of crucial funding to libraries. The only appropriate response is: one hand clapping. How else can we respond to the dilemma his proposal creates: a regressive tax increase, disproportionately penalizing the poor and middle class, that generates funds for a worthwhile, educational purpose? My own university seems to welcome the governor’s proposal with open arms – but then, the undernourished rarely question the source of proffered food. A few legislators have asked some of the right questions, e.g. how legitimate are the current exemptions to the sales tax, but no one goes so far as to propose rolling back the exuberant tax cuts of the recent past as a more just, long-term way of dealing with the deficit. Ah well, tainted money buys books just like money that’s fairly acquired. ON
TRYING TO BE WITHOUT SIN Philip Homan’s article in this issue on the controversy surrounding Michael Bellesiles's book, Arming America, raises important questions for librarians. What is a library to do when it owns books that it has good evidence to believe are not merely false, but dangerously false? What does one do with that copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or those volumes that deny the reality of the Holocaust? Quietly remove them from the collection? Obviously, this is an action that cannot be defended, when the Library Bill of Rights so clearly calls for libraries to gather material expressing all points of view and vehemently opposes censorship of the collection. What defense, after all, would librarians have against a would-be censor if they, themselves, were censorious? Accordingly, librarians have been casting verbal stones at the unenlightened, bigoted public for years, and defending their assault by proclaiming that they, thanks to the Office of Intellectual Freedom’s angel on their shoulder, have always followed Jesus’ advice regarding the circumstances under which such behavior is justifiable. But have librarians really taken that parable to heart? And, to pose the more poignant question, are we librarians really obligated to turn a virtuously blind eye to such books; to leave them on the shelves for all to read, and possibly believe? I have argued elsewhere* that we are not so obligated; that, on the contrary, we should muster our courage and find an effective way to let the user know, when appropriate, that what he or she reads may be quite mistaken, that the truth of a book's content is seriously disputed. Doing so would reveal, of course, that we are not, in reality, without the sin of making judgments, the sin of labeling, the sin of shaping and annotating our collections in accord with our own beliefs. But perhaps, if we did so, we would not only help our users to better understand what they read, we also would put ourselves into a healthy dialogue with them. Surely they have gotten tired of being lectured to by the self-righteous, intellectual eunuchs that we pretend to be. It would be most interesting to learn what Idaho librarians who have Bellesiles's book in their collections have done, or plan to do, with it. We will learn the details of Mr. Homan's proposal in the next issue; in the meantime, I invite you all to write to us and express your views on the issue. The Editor *"Enriching the Record," Journal of Academic Librarianship, vol.26, issue 5 (Sept. 2000)
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