Might be
Please flag the problematic books, says…Cambridge University Library???
The University Library, one of just six legal deposit libraries in Britain with some 10 million books, is asking lecturers to flag “problematic” books that might be “offensive/harmful”.
But…dear “university library,” most books might be problematic or harmful. There’s always that potential in nearly everything. If that’s your criterion you should be a paper-recycling facility, not a library.
Examples of such books are being sought from across the university’s colleges, with officials planning to draw up guidance for librarians and readers on how to cope with them.
I think you’ll find that “how to cope with” books is called “education” and that it’s something Cambridge University has a bit of a reputation for. Fun fact: Christopher Marlowe is an alumnus. Now he was offensive if you like.
Prof David Abulafia, a leading historian at Gonville and Caius College, said: “Identifying books because they are seen as problematic itself has a very problematic history – witness bibliographies in the Nazi period where books by Jewish authors are marked with a star.
“It is absolutely not the task of librarians to sit in judgment, least of all in a university where they don’t do any of the teaching and where it is vital to promote free debate.”
It’s not even the task of librarians to try to console or soothe people who find books problematic.
Cambridge’s University Library, founded in 1209, established a “decolonisation working group” in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, but it is continuing to expand with 17 current members.
The group say they are “actively re-contextualising library holdings which are a legacy of colonialism and occupation” and developing “policies and guidance relating to decolonisation”.
What happens when someone finds the decolonisers problematic?
H/t NightCrow
My husband was a librarian at a university library before he retired. He had to fight this battle several times with administrators, people from the town, and even from time to time other librarians. There are always books that someone won’t like. The university also removed artwork that made the local community uncomfortable.
I have an idea. Instead of marking the books or disposing of them, how about providing lollipops, teddy bears, and blankies for fragile students, so the rest of us can get on with the business of learning, teaching, and just in general figuring out how to navigate a life that doesn’t give a damn if we are in pain.
“How to cope” with books? You’re a frigging LIBRARY! You “cope” with books by READING them, or choosing to read something else. As a library, you “cope” with books by cataloging and shelving them. Get real.
They’re just books, not unexploded bombs. The way to “cope” with them is to read more books. There are going to be lots of publications with old, outdated ideas that have been superceded by more information and what we believe to be a better understanding. It is still important to keep the “outdated” books because it lets us see the context of the past, lets us see where we’ve come from, etc. Discovering the widespread, casual racism of the past can be alarming, but it’s better to have that awareness (and the evidence for it) than to pretend it didn’t exist, or to believe it will disappear with the removal of some statues and books. There going to be lots of ideas in the world that one might find upsetting or angering. Those ideas aren’t going to go away; neither are the people who espouse them. In the end, what’s important is determining whether or not an idea is good or not, true or not, and useful or not. Good, true, and useful do not always line up the way we’d like them to.
If you’re going to be emotionally crippled and scarred from ideas you find in books, then university might not be the place for you. Maybe reading altogether. If you’re going to use your claimed, personal discomfort (or that of some poor, helpless, marginalized, possibly hypothetical “other”), then working in a library might not be for you. Unless you pack any commitee you form to evaluate books for their “offensiveness” with like-minded people, few or none will escape censure and condemnation. Few books outside of phone directories will fail to piss off somebody. Your publicly accessible shelves are going to end up being rather bare, your padlocked stacks of “problematic” books nearly infinite.
Newton is remembered for some good ideas about the nature of the physical universe; his biblical and spiritual ideas have not stood the test of time. He likely also held ideas that we would consider bigoted and offensive. But would we have been given the useful physics without the wacky and the wicked, or are they all part of the package, with posterity left to separate the wheat from the chaff? Even geniuses can be wrong, misguided or offensive; sometimes the village idiot, bigot or misanthrope can speak the truth. There’s no knowing in advance who will say what. This winnowing is an ongoing process in which we all take part. What ideas do we assent to, pass along, and amplify? What’s our level of quality control? What do we do if we find out we’re wrong? It’s a truism, but it’s useful to remember that ideas can change the world. The best and the worst that humans do and have done all started with ideas that were picked up and put into action by a sufficient number of people. Without followers and doers, ideas go nowhere and do nothing. Timing and quality control are vital. There are bad times for good ideas, and good times for bad ones. Hitler without supporters would have been a crank. Alone, he could have done nothing. Acceptance, proliferation, and realization of his ideas led to the deaths of tens of millions of people. We are in a crisis period even more dire in its possible outcomes than the last World War. The ideas we put into reality will determine our future as a society and a species, with much of the rest of the biosphere along for the ride as powerless, innocent bystanders and collateral damage. What we think and do matters. What we don’t think and don’t do also matters.
With the volume of information, ideas and knowledge out there, it’s impoosible to avoid relying on authority, but you can still try to vet the authorities upon whom you rely. I know many of us here have been disappointed by the ideological capture of authorities we’d like to be able to depend upon; it’s disconcerting to find them parading around their obliviousness and inconsistency, displaying the blind spots in their own quality control. It makes it harder to trust anything they say on any subject. As uncomfortable as it might be, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to learn that they’re human and fallible too, that they can be as wrong about things as anyone else, including ourselves. The answer is not to shut them up, shout them down or ban them, but to discuss and debate. Easier said than done. But we have the tools, we just need to know how best, and when, to use them.
An unwillingness to engage in open, honest, goodfaith debate is not a good advertisement for the quality of one’s arguments. Claiming to have the moral high ground is not the same as earning it and keeping it. You can’t do it by fiat, because you might not have convinced anyone that your position is correct and defencible. Saying it is doesn’t prevent you from having to do the hard work required, it just delays it. If you can’t argue your position, you have no reason to hold it, and even less to proclaim its justice or superiority. If your ideas are so good, explain them to us and justify them. We can use some good ideas, the more the better. If you have the courage of your conviction, then you should be willing to put them to the test. If they pass, great. If they don’t, that’s also great because we can stop going down a blind alley we can ill afford to waste time and effort on.
*The books I find most “problematic” are the stupid ones that are wastes of paper. Books by “psychics” and “astrologers?” A waste. I’d be happy if our library system decided not to buy them for its collection. But that’s just me. If there wasn’t a market, they might stll be written, but they wouldn’t be published. And of course, as Ophelia points out, the right answer is education.
My books on kinetics, statistics and elementary mathematics are probably safe from today’s Savonarolas, as it’s hard to imagine anyone being offended by them. My book on biochemical evolution, on the other hand, may have already been banned from some libraries (though no one has told me if it has), as it shows less than total respect for the views of creationists.
The best way to deal with ‘problematic books’ is to write and publish critiques of them.
Yesterday I was at an exhibit of the Maya culture in the Science Museum of Minnesota. One of the reasons that archaeologists had such a hard time interpreting the hieroglyphics of the Maya was that a Spanish priest had destroyed the Maya codices that explained what they had carved in stone. The Maya culture had been stripped away in order to make them Catholic and save them (from what?) which meant that the remaining Maya were not able to help interpret.
Even if books are evil, a point I am not concedeing, one needs to keep them around for historical value to understand, and especially if they are the fruits of “colonization.” How could future generations understand what it is if there are no written works from that era? Righteous fury is a damnable motive for destruction.
The story has been picked up by the Times and the Library has issued a statement:
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