CILIP Banned Books Week Event

[RhubarbCrumbled]

CILIP Scotland are currently promoting a banned books week event. The blurb begins with two quotes condemning the LGBTQ++++ lifestyle as an example of why people want to ban certain books. From previous experience with CILIP's approach to the TQ and response to my GC views I think this is going to be an interesting discussion. Also especially around the banning / removal of books and people with GC views and DQST.

The event seems to be open to all so do come along and put your views across! www.cilips.org.uk/cilips-freedom/

And CILIP is the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. The event will centre on Public Library collections so of interest to everyone.

This looks promising, it's about time Cilip took a stand.

Do people want to ban the book or are they just promoting child safeguarding? Its impossible to say, they quote the review but not the book title.

I guess safeguarding is a kind of censorship. Its also gatekeeping and exclusionary. I'm still in favour of it, because I understand the alternative.

Interesting. It features Glasgow Women's Library director. Had a quick look at GLW's website FAQ and..

"What does ‘women only’ mean?

GWL recognises that women can thrive and foster skills and knowledge in spaces which are orientated around women and their lives and experiences. We also seek to redress sexism, discrimination and misogyny by promoting the lives, work, histories and achievements of women from a range of backgrounds. For these reasons, some of our events, classes and workshops are for women only, and sometimes are targeted at specific groups in particular, for example Muslim women, Women of Colour or younger women.

All women-only opportunities and events are inclusive of Trans and Intersex women, as well as non-binary and gender fluid people who are comfortable in a space that centres the experiences of women.

GWL is sensitive and inclusive of all gender and sex identities, and we recognise the complexity and limitations of language that can occur when describing gender specific events. As such, our women-only statement will be reviewed regularly.

All women only classes, workshops or events will be marked clearly in our print programmes and online."

That's not "women only", is it?

This could be interesting. The idea is not to censor books representing gender identity ideology but to ensure alternative views are also given space.
I can't make the date but I hope there will be a clear defence of, for example, Julie Bindel who was banned from speaking at Aspley Library.
If Cilip are writing a policy paper they need to be absolutely clear that they are unbiased otherwise they're hypocritically setting themselves up as censors.

No it isn't and it was doing so well up to that point.

If anything is described as women only/for women, I always double check what it means.

Glasgow Women's Library have behaved absolutely appallingly towards women who don't buy into genderism. I have a lot of anger towards them.

Given the relentless pushing of some really quite dodgy material for 'queer' youths, (as differentiated from LGB), I can imagine how this event is likely to go ...

Sorry. Cynical. Maybe I'm wrong.

I completely agree. I'd love to see women like JK Rowling, Helen Joyce and Julie Bindel there as it's their books that are quite often at the centre of these bannings and censorship. Along with the Fingal Libraries debacle there's a lot for libraries to sort out before they can claim to be the arbiters of balanced views and collections.
I'm so effing sick of some people in my profession at the moment!!

And here's the link to the meeting if you don't want to register

Join Zoom Meeting
us02web.zoom.us/j/83493791860?pwd=ge9deCE0XYzKfvdhJq3pacz9GB6gKN.1
Meeting ID: 834 9379 1860
Passcode: 532870

Linking other current relevant thread

Banned Books www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4639113-banned-books

I wanted to attend the online event so I registered to do so. As it turned out, I couldn’t make it on the day, but because I’d registered, I received a subsequent email with a link to a recording of the session. Here’s the link:

I appreciate that this is a very difficult topic and there is a very slippery tightrope to be walked between safeguarding children and enabling open access to information and ideas. Personally, I’m not in favour of the banning books so I was interested to see how the fight against censorship was approached by professional librarians.

I have to say, I was not particularly encouraged by what I heard. At about 51 minutes into the session, a Director of Glasgow Women’s Library was speaking about feminist discourse and how this is covered in the Museum and Archive section of the library. Here, she said, there were several texts that might now be considered offensive and even harmful – depending, as she said, on your definition of ‘harmful’ – and gave examples of ‘anti-trans’ writers from the 80s and 90s such as Sheila Jeffreys and Janice Raymond. She went on to add that they’d recently received a text from a current gender critical author – no name or title given – and said that this too had gone into the Museum and Archive section rather than the lending section because it was important, she said, to record the history of feminist and LGBTQ discourse. I have no problem with recording such a history but my question is why a text on a currently active debate would not also be in the lending section and openly available to anyone who wants to consider and evaluate current ideas? I may be being uncharitable but side-lining a contemporary woman author seems like a form of censorship to me.

Yeah that sounds like a way of keeping it hidden while paying lip service to documenting different views. Better than refusing to collect it at all, but a far cry from vigorous promotion of debate and different opinions.

Because GWL are captured.

Thanks for posting the link.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3834795-ForWomen-Scot-banned-from-Glasgow-Womens-Library

The archiving element is interesting.

I've seen it used in other instances where it was less of the moment. For example, there were complaints recently near me about some of the pictures in certain Dr Seuss books. The decision in my system was to place them in the back-up collection. The idea being that kids wouldn't stumble on them accidentally but they would be accessible if someone asked for them, and they appear in the public catalogue.

The differences being that the books are in fact historic which largely accounts for the different views people have now about the illustrations, and also that they are children's books, and children's sections need to be managed a little differently.

I think even including books like Jerrfies in the achive makes no sense. They are older books, but they are still relevent to modern discussions, I can't imagine they put every other political book from the 70s (or earlier!) aside like that.

The only reason they've done it is that they think they talk about things that are controversial, and that is inappropriate for them to censor.