I work in a k-12 International School. Our students age range is from 3 – 19 years. We have one library for our main campus which is k – 12. Our library collection is highly differentiated. we have 6 different areas for fiction from board books through to adult fiction.

A couple of years ago I purchased an award winning book for the Young Adult fiction section based on a review I had read. We do not have English language bookshops near us and this title was not one that was sources in country. Like most of our resources I purchased it sight unseen. The book is ‘Nothing’ by Janne Teller. It has an amazing history – commissioned by the Danish education authority to write the book Teller completed it in 200 and it won awards in Denmark. Here is my personal (as opposed to CSU) blog post about the book and my response to it.

This book is dark. It is on a par with ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding but in some ways is more extreme. I read the book and instantly wondered if it was in the right collection. The Young Adult collection is read by grades 5 – 8. My concern was that a fifth grader might pick it up. I decided not to change it on my own thoughts so I gave it to our Deputy Principal and a trusted senior student to read. Their reactions – like me they couldn’t put the book down. Like me they felt it belonged in the in the adult fiction section. We all agreed that the subject matter and the resolution of it at the end of the book was adult in nature and therefore not suitable for an elementary school student to read.

This is a very long explanation for my question. I am asking myself this as much as you my classmates: By placing certain books in certain parts of our collection am I censoring them? Teller’s book is still available to our school community to read. Yet – if a fifth grade student was borrowing a book from the adult fiction collection we would look at it carefully and think about whether the student could handle the content. When I look at the definition which started this part of the module, ” Censorship is the conscious effort of an individual, group or government agency … to prevent access to whatever is available to be read, seen or heard.” The ALA World encyclopaedia of library and information services (1980, p.124) I think I have been a censor.

Yet do we not have a responsibility to place the most appropriate resources at the right place for our students? We also have a growing DVD collection. We use colour codes and censorship ratings on the spines of the movies to help students select age appropriate materials and we do not lend out material that is not age appropriate. A few years back we had an irate parent come in with the movie ‘Love Actually’ demanding that we remove it from the collection because of tits explicit nature. Very calmly I showed her that on the cover there is a censorship rating which we follow. She was the one who borrowed the DVD not her children. Our collection is used bu the whole family. She was most relieved when I explained our policy of not lending DVD’s to children unless it was age appropriate. How do we know this? We follow a censorship rating.

So there seem to be times when it is appropriate to censor material for our students – such as not allowing young children access to adult content DVD’s. This is for their protection. I think this issue of censorship is not as black and white as we imagine. I am wondering where the idea of values and morals and ethics come into it. Why are we comfortable about censoring visual media but not print?

I fear I have made myself out to be thought police kind of librarian. Believe me I am not. I work hard to try to be self aware enough not to allow my own prejudices to get in the way of balanced collection development. I defend the child’s right to read what they want to read. I also say to them it is okay not to finish a book if you get bored with it or if it offends or worries you. My own child abandoned an award winning book a few years ago because it had too much swearing in it. That book was returned to the shelves for other children to read and enjoy.

I wrote this to the class forum hoping to spark some discussion…