We all know about the Inquisition, that ultimate machine of control and censorship. Yet intellectual freedom can be threatened in less direct ways. In recent years in the USA, triggered by 9/11 and moral panics and conservative/religious sentiment, a “new inquisition” has emerged. It is “the legacy of the mid‐life Baby Boomers, the belief that it is an urgent ethical mission to challenge, resist, even torture any public institution that crosses you. They believe the institution – particularly if tax‐supported – is always wrong”. James LaRue, director of the Douglas County Libraries (Castle Rock, Colorado) since 1990, sets this up for discussion. With new dogma about patriotism and religion (is loyalty more to faith than state?) and new cultural demographics in the USA and elsewhere, new inquisitions will keep appearing to challenge public library work.
Any book on intellectual freedom and censorship faces the overwhelming inertia from readers who say “not that old thing again!”. But this is a fresh new and timely look at an old issue. It is a book with many plain‐speaking and perceptive insights (and do not let a rather dry historical first chapter deter you). Public libraries (for all the Library Bill of Rights and the First Amendment) face the dilemma of “ideological bullying or public appeasement”. There are “books we don't buy but don't oppose” (and many users or patrons do not seem to recognize the difference). The community includes people who say “the book made me do it” or “the library should promote only positive role models” or “removing such‐and‐such a book makes the library better”. Writers on censorship usually represent these as conservatives and contrast them with liberals who argue that censorship does not work.
So what are public librarians to do, LaRue asks, living as they seem to do on “the fault line between legitimate concern about the public library and the hysteria of alarmist attacks”? There are now laws (in the USA) to protect children against the internet and that asks public libraries to filter content. Many regard librarians as lefties, accepting and promoting books on Hallowe’en and teenage sex and homosexuality. One woman, sitting next to a teenager in the library, saw a sexual image on his screen and turned angrily to the librarian: “How dare you let my son look at that in the library!”. LaRue's comment: if that had been my mother, it would not have been the library that took the blame.
He is right to point out two important things: first, user responsibility (parents and children live and should live in the real world where everything cannot be controlled and where there are many viewpoints in the community); second, library responsibility (library policies do not exist for their own sake, there really are things like some racism and violence worth taking care about, and libraries operate in the community). LaRue is a strong advocate of dialogue between libraries and users. He criticizes public libraries (and other public institutions like schools) for all too often being patronizing and bureaucratic and invisible: that makes it impossible to put a convincing and friendly case for retaining particular books and allowing particular forms of internet content in libraries. As well as a lot of no‐nonsense discussion about intellectual freedom and censorship, he provides something else of value in this book: advice on how to start and maintain a productive dialogue.
A recurring theme in the book is how to deal effectively with challenges. Often users are angry or indignant, often ignorant and even bigoted, smell a conspiracy endorsed by bureaucrats (like “the secular humanists or the Mormons are always up to something”), and frequently impatient to listen to explanations of something as institutional as library policy. Yet many if not most practitioners, above all in public and school libraries, know that there are times when this cannot be ducked. It often comes where parents seem concerned about what their children are reading (young children and then at puberty), but the ideological battleground is community‐wide and often political as well (“what are we spending our taxes on?”). A library should reflect community values but not slavishly – that is public appeasement.
LaRue puts a spirited case for dealing face‐on with challenges – not being defensive, meeting the emotion, getting the tone right, offering alternatives, discussing the issues, following up the user's concerns, accepting that at times the matter will involve senior managers. He provides a long appendix of letters he himself has written in similar circumstances, not so much as models but as examples: he has been there, has the campaign medals, and so has street‐cred. Even though the context is US public libraries, the issues here will translate into public libraries anywhere, and into school and children's libraries too.
The underlying challenge is whether to “give “em what they want” and passively reflect community values”, or to “become a player” – get out there, get noticed, write for local papers, use local media, take part in community events and get to know concerns and prejudices and cultural differences, take note of moral panics, be prepared to argue your case and at times give way. Better to be a player than a gatekeeper. This book mercifully is not another trot through the principles of intellectual freedom (though sources are given at the back): it is a real‐life book about meeting challenges in an adult professional way.
Given that a lot of talk about intellectual freedom and censorship is either dogmatic or childish in library work, The New Inquisition is a book I would give to any librarian who tried to bend my ear and say that people out there really do not understand what we are trying to do. If the case against censorship is that of the uncloistered virtue (i.e. how else are we to grow up?), then it is case equally relevant to those tormented souls in the profession who think they are right but do not know why everyone else does not think so too.
