What is a Librarian's Responsibility?
The LibraryDiva has a post about the quack book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About. She mentions that after reading my post (8/8/2005) about the book, she went to see if her library (a public library) owned a copy. Sure enough the library she works at has a copy of the book and it is very popular, it has been checked out 16 times and currently has 54 holds.
So I checked the Cuyahoga County Public Library, Cleveland Public Library, and OhioLink. Ugh. Cuyahoga County Public Library has 10 copies, all of which are checked out, on hold or in transit. Cleveland Public has over 166 copies just as popular. Two universities (Ohio U. and Cedarville U.) have copies on order and Westerville Public Library has 8 copies listed in OhioLink.
The Library Diva also talks about how she feels she in a bit of a dilemma as to whether the book should remain in her library. She says, "As a librarian, I don't have a choice. Although I might view the contents of the book to be complete garbage (not to mention dangerous), I have a long line of patrons who want to read it. And while I might choose to not purchase or remove a certain book from my personal collection, that does not give me the right to remove it from the public's collection (i.e. my library's collection). I would never censor the fiction my patrons elect to read, so why would I ever presume to censor their non-fiction reading? I wouldn't."
My question for the Diva: Would you keep outdated or incorrect legal guides?
I am not a public librarian, I am a medical librarian so for me it is clear and easy, I have a policy statement that would make it easy for me to eliminate or never purchase materials that do not support my hospital's patient care goals and objectives. Clearly a quack book does not support it.
However, what about community health libraries and public libraries with health information, shouldn't there be a policy regarding health material? As health information becomes more and more prevalent and with the increasing acceptance of alternative medicine, shouldn't non-medical libraries start to beef up their collection development policies regarding medical/health information?
2 Comments:
I would guess that not all librarians feel qualified to judge whether a medical/health book is accurate and of acceptable quality. With the plethora of (mis)information available on the Web, one book might not make much of a difference. I think the most important thing a librarian could teach the public is how to evaluate information for themselves.
Everyone has his/her own biases and it's up to the individual to decide what to accept. Someone's natural cold remedy could work every time for them (placebo effect), but not at all for me. Is it wrong of me to dismiss it?
This is a tough one, but we in the public library world face this dilemma all the time. The larger principle, in my opinion, is that in a democratic society, citizens have the right to read whatever they choose. Censorship is censorship. Removing a book or other item from a collection because you personally believe it contains fallacious, dangerous or pernicious information is called censorship. I've read the book in question, and found it relatively innocuous. To me, the only difference between it and, say, Matthew Lesko's incessant repackaging of publicly-available grant and scholarship information in the "Free Money" series he "writes" is that Lesko is not a convicted felon. Yet.
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