In the case of academic libraries, putting scholarly works in the collection is a step towards establishing authority, but it isn’t sponsorship of the content so much as sponsorship of the process of peer-reviewed scholarly publication. I don’t think that a library not buying Playboy constitutes censorship, if that’s what you’re getting at, though I also don’t see how a library buying Playboy constitutes sponsorship of its content in any usual sense of the word.” Certainly the implication of my initial post was that the librarian’s job was to decide what to do in the collection, and that not putting something in the collection (in my case Self-aggrandizing Amateur Philosophers or SAPs) was not censorship. The censorship/sponsorship distinction doesn’t seem to me to make much sense. My initial response was that I assumed “the mayor of Oak Lawn is responding to a censorship or banned books controversy of some sort. If someone wants, that’s fine, they can buy it at a store.” It appears you would agree with that mayor’s statement.

Here’s part of one of the comments: “The mayor of Oak Lawn, IL, said, “There is a difference between censorship and sponsorship. Maybe I should be more provocative, but in general I’m too willing to see the other’s point of view to provoke too much.

My first librarian as filter post received a couple of comments, and since I don’t get many comments that fact alone was exciting. I should subtitle this post “The Librarian is the Filter,” or perhaps “The Librarian is the Filter.”

Filter forge librarian library location