50 types of books
50 Shades of Grey is banned in some libraries because its deemed pornographic. Other libraries have alledgedly banned fairy tales after a single complaint from a parent.
Libraries are supposed to be places where you go to gain knowledge. They were created to allow the disemination of knowledge and ideas to those who could not afford books. Now not all knowledge is science. Some knowledge can be gained by reading about how others do things, or reading poetry that makes you think about your situation. Books also provide pleasure through fiction which allow the reader to escape into alternative realities.
Until the invention of Gutenberg’s press books were kept by the elite. And they weren’t happy that the lower classes would be able to read such subversive items as The Times which published news about what the elite were up to.
But then as knowledge rapidly spread around the world it became the liberal thing to encourage reading.
But then it seems that too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing and they want to ban books again. The elite don’t think the lower classes or the less educated can handle themselves when they read childrens books that show racism. They think that such people will start rutting like rabbits in libraries when they read books like 50 Shades of Grey. So when the odd person complains about the content of a book and asks for it to be removed, the elite seem to jump at the chance at banning the book.
The person who complains is not less educated, they are just following the guidance of the elite who provide an example by deciding to ban books from libraries for spurious reasons.
If slightly erotic books and fairy tales can be banned from libraries, what other categories of books should be banned for spurious reaons? It could be argued that the following types of books should banned from libraries because they might corrupt or deprave readers. Such as
- Religious books
- Violent war bogs
- Books about criminals
- Books with murder in them
- Science books that allow the making of bombs
- Books about upper class women falling in love with groundsmen
- Books with blasphemy against any religion
- 43 other categories which I’m sure you can provide suggestions for
So should libraries allow erotic books to appear on their shelves. Should books about dangerous subjects such as explosive chemical reactions be allowed in libraries. And books that say that Nazi political thought is the one true path sit alongside those of Marx? In my view yes. If libraries are to continue to exist, then they cannot ban anything. They can put restrictions on the lending, such as being over a certain age for the erotic books, but they can’t ban them. They can also keep track of which books you have borrowed, details of which can be given to police when legally requested. But they can’t ban books.
If libaries are to carry on banning books for weird reasons, should they be shut down because they are not carrying out their original remit?
Even though I’ve just seemed to argue for the preservation of libraries, all I’ve said is that they should be consistent with the reason for their creation. But I would say that the time of the library has come to an end. Not all libraries, but public lending libraries. Just like wax cylinders got replaced by vinyl and then by CD and then by MP3, and just like the old cotton mills of the North which have fallen into disrepair, sometimes somethings come to a natural end.
Libraries claim they provide a public service and are a necessary part of the Big Society, but the numbers of people visiting them are falling. The stats don’t say how many of the visitors visit for reasons other than to borrow a book, but I wouldn’t be surprised that it’s a signficant number.
When libraries provide facilities like internet access for free (or low cost), rooms for groups to have meetings, and times when children can be brought in to learn to paint/draw/write as an attempt to counter the falling numbers of book borrowers, then it’s obvious that the main purpose of lending books is disappearing.
So libraries are serving a small proportion of the public.
What they do is allow people to borrow books for free. Considering the cost of providing this support it could probably be argued that giving this small group of people an ebook reader each and vouchers to buy books off Amazon is more cost effective. Plus there would be less censorship.
Similarly, internet access could be provided with vouchers for any local internet cafe. Why should libabries be subsided to undercut a service provided by a business.
The actual buildings can be kept and continued to be used for the community purposes that they already provide.
But then all said and done I’m probably totally biased as I’ve not been in a library for nearly twenty years with one exception which was because I was looking for a reference book on local architechture.
Have any of you been to a library recently to borrow a book? Is the web a replacement for books with blogs replacing newspapers and ebooks replacing paper books?
SBML
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May 29, 2012 at 11:10 -
I have a lot of affection for libraries. I spent a lot of time in them when I was a child and I’m sure that helped to foster a lifetime love of books. But I can accept that their time is probably past. I think those who talk of the social benefits of libraries and their ‘empowering’ and ‘liberating’ possibilities are still living in a world where the working classes were unlettered but decent, and most were keen to learn and ‘better themselves’ – a rather paternalistic viewpoint, when you think about it. In the days of universal education, the internet, ebooks and Wikipedia, the public libraries have lost their main justification, that of placing knowledge within the reach of the working man (the rich always had their own libraries).
As an illustration, I was going to mention how rootling around in a library introduced me to the subtle eroticism of D M Thomas (not blatant enough to be censored by the Nora Batty behind the desk, but pretty potent stuff). I borrowed this particular book and I was hooked. And then I realised that I had forgotten the name of the book, and that it was actually quicker to go to Google to find the name than to turn my head to the left and scan my bookshelves to find it. Says it all, really. It was ‘The Birthstone’, by the way.
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May 29, 2012 at 19:41 -
Public libraries are a symbol of the value of learning for its own sake, beacons in the dark world of economic relevance being the only criterion for the worth of human endeavour. They are citadels against the massification of culture imposed from above by corporates.
It’s time to revisit the wisdom of Richard Hoggart’s observations in the Lady Chatterley trial.
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May 29, 2012 at 11:12 -
Would someone remind me which specific piece of legislation enshrines an individual’s right to be not offended?
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May 29, 2012 at 11:22 -
You’re spot on SBML. Either libraries should dissemminate all information and opinions without censorship or close down. A situation where they pretend to be free but secretly censor content is the worst of all situations.
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May 29, 2012 at 11:30 -
In my world books can never be replaced totally.
I read a lot also on my beloved IPad especially when travelling but my library is irreplaceable. -
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May 29, 2012 at 12:41 -
I agree a lot with Richard B above. I loved my local library as a boy, an later as a student I have fond memories of the huge university library. It was a copyright library (entitled to a copy of every book published in the UK I understand). It was huge, like the Battersea power station. Sadly recall not so much studying as eating lemon cake and drinking tea in the canteen, trying to “pull” a student called Jane, and playing a kind of crazy golf on the various levels. The “courses” would incorporate tricky multi level holes, in which the ball would have to be played into the lift, up or down to the appropriate level, and then playeds out to the designated “hole”.
Happy days .
But I still love books. Just holding them. I think these Kindle things look and feel horrid. Gah!
G the M-
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May 29, 2012 at 20:42
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May 29, 2012 at 13:47 -
Libraries, especially the travelling ones, provide an indispensible service for the elderly and/or housebound. Also, many older people do not like e-book readers.
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May 29, 2012 at 20:45 -
Mobile libraries have limited carrying capacity.
What about a LoveFilm type business which allows people to rent paper books for a period of time. They can select from a list, have the book mailed to them, and then they return it back by post. No worries about fines for not returning the book in time ’cause you can’t borrow another one till you’ve returned the first. As to censorship/banns, well there is no requirement to have just a single company providing the service. You could have companies providing erotic books, others children, yet others western/horror/war for men, etc.
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May 29, 2012 at 14:18 -
The great thing about libraries ( and second hand book shops), is they encourage one to dip into areas that one normally wouldn’t venture into. A title or dust jacket catches the eye and , because it doesn’t cost you anything, you think, ‘ I’ll have a butchers’.
Obviously , standards have gone to the dogs, but one thing I would like to see in every library is a section of genuine classics, the sort of books that boring old farts like us know and realise the worth of, but which have probably been off the radar for the past 25 years – everything from Biggles to Trollope.-
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May 29, 2012 at 15:33 -
Ok, so the libraries have all these classics. How are you going to get people to go and read them? Are they going to lie there just on the off chance someone comes along and has a glance.
I found it a lot easier to do the same thing when I got my smart phone where I could access Amazon books for free and get ebooks like Moby Dick, etc. Plus I didn’t have to bring along proof of address, proof of identity (I don’t know if you do, just assuming because everything else requires it) to get a library card first.
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May 29, 2012 at 17:39 -
Of course, with ebooks it doesn’t usually cost you to read the first chapter either…
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May 29, 2012 at 20:03 -
SBML
“Plus I didn’t have to bring along proof of address, proof of identity”
Oh yes you do. Just because it is not requested, does not mean it is not easily available from your credit card.
This is why I shall never have a Kindle. You simply cannot buy books anonymously. If I want the “anarchists cookbook” or “the memoirs of an urban guerilla” (I absolutely don’t but you get the point), well that’s freedom and it’s quite a bit less free if it’s all recorded.
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May 29, 2012 at 20:59
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May 29, 2012 at 21:15 -
And what’s to stop a benevolent World Government thinking that because books can cause unhappiness they must all be edited to have happy endings. A simple task with eBooks but nearly impossible with good old paper. Perhaps you could download Fahrenheit 451 before it goes the way of the archive copies of the Times in 1984.
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May 29, 2012 at 23:08
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May 29, 2012 at 15:57 -
Fifty years ago pretty much every ‘worker’ was paid in cash, weekly – notes and coins with the monarch’s head on. And they paid all their bills and shopping that way too, the prudent ones saving in pots and tins for the bigger bills as they came along.
Then bank accounts and cheque books, along with credit-transfer wages appeared and, gradually, people adopted those. Then came credit cards, followed by debit cards, then on-line banking, and now e-cash is starting to appear. Sometime soon there will be no need for traditional cash as everything to do with payment becomes feasible in the e-format.
It’s the same with libraries – as all information and literature progressively migrates to on-line access, and as technology becomes accessible to all, the need for any single point of storage and access vanishes. Yes, there are some minor social losses involved, but that’s small beer compared to the benefits of total access anytime, anywhere, for free.
We can’t expect public authorities to maintain the edifice until the very last Luddite shuffles off. Old timers like us may grumble and mutter but that’s progress – it did for the canals, the horse & cart and the blacksmith, and now it is doing for libraries too. Get over it.
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May 29, 2012 at 17:19 -
I’m a regular user of my local library, which has a ‘Freedom to read’ policy. No books are banned. They will order anything from ‘Mein Kampf’ and ‘Wealth of Nations’ to ‘Grimms Fairy Tales’ upon request.
Then again, i don’t live in the UK any more.
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May 29, 2012 at 20:39 -
I grew up in a small town with a Georgian market place and slap-bang in the middle of the market place was a tiny building, complete with miniature clock tower, which was the library.
Looking down my kitchen right now I realise that library was probably only twice the size of this space but it was, despite my mother owning probably 600 books then and at her death nearly 2000, a place she would take us all to as children to choose what it was that we wanted to read that week.
I think we went because she was returning her own book and would, of course, be choosing another. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have children’s books at home; my favourites were Ma’s ‘William’ books she’d read as a child and which, to my shame, I defaced with oil pastels around 1972 just because I wanted to see what fashionably-bobbed Ethel would look like with a feather cut and platform soles.
Those ‘William’ books are now in an old oak cupboard in my daughter’s room and I have my mother’s most-loved books crammed into any space that will accommodate them and we just go about our everyday activities squeezing between bookcases. An original copy of The Just So Stories nestles between Henry James and Proust, Virgil sits by Pope, Virgil rubs shoulders with Robertson Davies and Austen jostles with Mitford for attention.
Libraries are for people who love books.
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May 29, 2012 at 22:52 -
Interesting post, Mr SBML. Totally agree on the censorship, totally disagree on the utility of the libraries. Books have been written off, so have radio and cinema; the tech fashions come and go, Kindles, whatever: maybe they`ll be superseded by us having interactive toenails in twenty years or so. As for the internet superseding books, the net does not yet have depth of knowledge or breadth of perspective. It`s a scattergun approach. And, given that many reference works are priced at twenty quid or more, if you`re doing some research the lending library is the only place to go.
Also no greasy spiv is making money out of it. And in my library, surrounded by hundreds of reference books, I almost fall into a daze at the thought of all that undiscovered information in them. Try it, Mr SBML, I think you could be a convert.
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May 29, 2012 at 23:05
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May 29, 2012 at 23:09 -
The thing about libraries is that their benefits have been replicated and superseeded by the private sector internet. The problem is that their operation is almost exclusively in the public sector, and of course, once a public sector entity has been created, it can never be eliminated, only added to. Schumpters rule of creative destruction does not apply.
Socialism is stasis.
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May 30, 2012 at 00:43 -
Libraries are a great boon nto the much maligned elderly ( sorry if we bother you).
If you have trouble walking , have not enough money for all trendy electronic gismos, and dont want to use a computer the libraries are AOK.
We use our local library every week. Do you use all the expensive sports facilities demanded by youf and granted so willingly.
Oh- and a pox on the word ‘community’. -
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May 30, 2012 at 07:09 -
No sign of my village library fading away. The childrens section is busy , we have newspapers, and computers. Best of all, the crime section has it’s own wall. I have no idea if there’s any censorship.
We even have a new self service system using existing membership cards which is ridiculously easy to use. West Sussex County Council seem to be doing a good job.
I’m a kindle addict but must have books. -
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May 30, 2012 at 08:30 -
I have so many books that I am reduced to stepping over them because I have run out of space for more book shelves. And I only keep books that I know I will read again.
They don’t have English Libraries around here so it was a question of necessity against the unthinkable day. But I have got half a dozen box loads of books to go, if anyone wants them. And even those are worth a first read.
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