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[Chuck Munson]

Joe Schallan wrote:
 
> Carlos,
> 
> Thanks for hitting on what I think is the hard part of all this
> uproar.  Personally and professionally, I am opposed to
> censorship.  It is a slippery slope and you don't want to
> start down it.  I think web access ought to be wide open,
> with the responsibility for use placed with the user.
> 
> But as a city employee I also took a pledge not to
> politicize anything I do in my role as a public servant.
> The opposition to the Exon provision is high-minded
> and worthy of support, but no matter how worthy, it
> is still a political matter.
> 

Joe, I believe that that pledge seriously conflicts with your duties 
as a librarian. Please understand that all I have to say is not 
directed at you personally. I agree with another poster to web4lib 
that by "not taking a political position" you are still being 
political. From what I have seen in the library press (letters from 
librarians supporting censorship of LesBiGay materials) many 
librarians haven't discovered this. Librarianship is a political 
profession: one cannot stand idly by when another is being censored, 
no matter what their views.

> If library patrons ask me for my views on censorship,
> I will tell them, and I will note that those views are my
> own but are widely shared within the profession.  But
> my web site is considered an official communication
> with citizens by both my director and my city administration.
> It must remain apolitical.

What a gutless director and city administration! What currently 
disgusts me about the library profession is the inability of library 
professionals to take political stands on issues that would have 
seemed normal 10, 20 years ago. Are we going to let the forces of 
censorship and defunding beat us back that badly?

> 
> I think it is fine for .com and .org and .edu sites (where
> the "orgs" and the "edus" are private ones) to make
> any statement they wish.
> 
> Thanks for your comments.
> 
> Joe

Some of us .edu sites would like to make statements that are really 
not that controversial, but are hogtied by buck-passing.

> 
> PS.  I think there is a tendency in our profession, which seems
> dominated by political liberals, to act as though it knows
> what's better for the citizens it serves than they do.
> That attitude invites interference in the library's mission, as
> the recent controversy involving a group called Family
> Friendly Libraries shows.  We need to simultaneously uphold
> freedom of thought and be respectful of citizens' concerns.
> No one said it would always be easy.
> 

I think that most of our "citizens" support freedom of speech, but 
that some librarians these days buckle in to a small minority of 
censors in fear of being seen as political. I know that there are 
many librarians who are fighting censorship, but let us make 
fighting censorship to be as common to librarianship as checking out 
books.

Chuck0 Munson
Systems Librarian
Somewhere in Maryland