Calderdale Council librarians censoring books! By women of course.

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

It appears that librarians working for Calderdale Council believe it's their job to hide books from the public if they personally disapprove of the content. Of course they're books written by women - Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, Abigail Shrier, Heather Brunskell Evans and a number of others. They've been removed from the shelves and hidden them!
An unbelievable level of censorship and none of them have been disciplined - the council appear to be supportive of anti democratic censorship like this:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/31/gender-critical-books-hidden-librarians-calderdale/

As I understand it, under FOI rules, you can write back, object to their refusal to disclose the information which they have confirmed that they hold, and ask for the decision to be reviewed.

What I find puzzling about their response is that they are using “confidential third party information” as their justification. I would expect that justification to be used for information supplied by another, external, organisation which was supplied to them on a confidential basis. But they go on to say that the removal of the books was prompted by an internal management decision, relating to an HR matter. That isn’t “third party confidential information” it’s internal staffing information, as I see it at least.

I don’t think Calderdale can argue that they should not supply a redacted version of the paper trail of the decision. Let’s be clear. What Calderdale have done here is make a policy decision to discriminate against a group of citizens on the basis of their WORIADS belief. There is a legitimate public interest in the arguments which were put forward by the individual who argued for Calderdale libraries to go down this route of withholding written material from in-person library users browsing the shelves in Cakderdale’s publically accessible and publically funded buildings.

Calderdale cannot refuse to disclose the information they hold on the arguments deployed in support of that discriminatory decision. Their argument that there is no way to supply that information on the arguments deployed without identifying the person who made them is implausible. The Information Commissioner would likely find it implausible too.

I 100% agree with this.

I'm reading their response as 'we're using this excuse, which is clearly quite flimsy, in the hope that the hassle of challenging us will make you go away'.

They really can't hide behind employee data if their policy position is that if a member of staff is offended by something it can be taken off the shelves. Would they really do that with any other subject? What if a staff member has an irrational fear of cats, would they remove all the cat-related books? Obviously not.

Thanks dimorphism.

In writing back to Calderdale, I’d focus on “Calderdale Library Service’s operational decision to offer a lesser service to those citizens with an interest in reading books which pose questions about gender identity theory than that offered to citizens with in interest in books campaigning in favour of gender identity theorists’ position”.

Whilst I described this as a policy decision in my previous post I would avoid that wording in a follow up complaint, and focus on the rationale for this operational decision/ service delivery decision.

Some really helpful points. It does sound as if they have "fobbed off" catduckgoose in order to avoid exposing that they've surrendered to an employee demanding they censor books.

Censorship like this demonstrates an unhealthy level of political extremism and has no place in a democratic society.

LoobiJee · Today 09:39

Calderdale cannot refuse to disclose the information they hold on the arguments deployed in support of that discriminatory decision. Their argument that there is no way to supply that information on the arguments deployed without identifying the person who made them is implausible. The Information Commissioner would likely find it implausible too.

I don't see why they cannot release the information, with the name and anything which could identify the manager redacted, with an explanation as to what has been redacted and why.

They really can't hide behind employee data if their policy position is that if a member of staff is offended by something it can be taken off the shelves. Would they really do that with any other subject?

I'm pretty sure that they aren't taking the LGBT books off of display when the conservative or Christian is upset by them.

Hell, let's just abolish libraries while we're at it.

you joke....

Libraries will have collection development policies, outlining what they keep and why they buy and withdraw topics. This won't be the librarians, who often don't get near shelves now, but if it is staff, this should be picked up as a staff disciplinary issue as the full range of stock should be made available as per that policy.

Earlier today I received another response to my FOI request to Calderdale Council, following up on the review they did:

I am contacting you as a follow up to your recent enquiry concerning the decision, taken as part of an internal HR matter, to relocate six book titles from our library shelves to the lending store. As you may be aware the Director of Public Services was asked to review this recommendation and has now made two recommendations in relation to this matter. These being:

1. That the six book titles are replaced on the library shelves, in line with the current stock management policy. However, in doing so, the books should not be promoted.

2. That work takes place to review/update the stock management policy and this is presented to Cabinet for consideration and approval before the end of March 2024.

The recommendations have been accepted by the Council Chief Executive and will now be implemented.

A full copy of the review can be accessed by the following link: https://new.calderdale.gov.uk/libraries/update/books

Good news! The books have been returned to the shelves and they've revised their policy so this doesn't happen again.

The best part is, this completely backfired on whoever insisted the books be removed, as there's now so much demand that the library had to order extra copies:

Appendix C

Data about the books.

Title: Material girls Author: Stock, Kathleen

[...]

Copy 3 (No accession no. – On order)

First available: Not available yet – ordered 10/08/2023*

* New copy ordered, as this title currently has 11 reservations on it – and as such, has breached our ratio of more than three reservations to one copy. As one copy is effectively lost – and the other is heavily reserved, we have ordered another copy to ensure that people in the reservation list have a chance of getting the item in a reasonable time.

[...]

Title: Trans : when ideology meets reality Author: Joyce, Helen

[...]

Copy 3 (No accession no. – On order)

First available: Not available yet – ordered 10/08/2023 *

* New copy ordered, as this title currently has 11 reservations on it – and as such, has breached our ratio of more than three reservations to one copy. As one copy is effectively lost – and the other is heavily reserved, we have ordered another copy to ensure that people in the reservation list have a chance of getting the item in a reasonable time.

Many thanks to the disgruntled transactivist council employee who facilitated this!

Ha ha ha!

Brilliant. I think the phrase "hoisted by your own petard" is pretty apt here.

In contrast, Shon Faye's book came up on my library's "dead list" the other day (I work in my local library, not in Calderdale but not a million miles away either). Dead list books haven't been borrowed for X number of days. On a closer look this copy has never been borrowed, either from my library, where it currently is, or from any other library in the county. Which means next month I get to withdraw it, send it back to the county library HQ, from where it will most likely to sent to get pulped. In accordance with the stock management policy for books no-one wants to read.

Happy days.

Hi catduckgoose

Re this recommendation…

“2. That work takes place to review/update the stock management policy and this is presented to Cabinet for consideration and approval before the end of March 2024.”

have you asked them for a copy of their current stock management policy?

If you haven’t, I would suggest writing and asking for a copy of it.

You’ll need to be able to compare the new policy with the old one, when the new one emerges, to check they haven’t made it worse.

Oh, and well done on pursuing this, and thanks for updating the thread.

Do authors make money from library borrows?

I keep giggling over your post, @SirSamVimesCityWatch Childish, I know.

They certainly do.

https://www.bl.uk/plr

Has the Dailly Telegraph been reading this thread and writing it up as an article??!!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/19/library-gender-critical-books-kathleen-stock/

Also available to read at https://archive.ph - just paste in the telegraph link above.

‘Effectively lost’ - has a borrower been taking it on themselves to censor the library’s stock? Seems more than coincidence that one of each of trans and material girls is effectively lost, I assume that means not returned and significant time has elapsed.

Quite possibly, although stock does get lost all the time.

The Telegraph are keeping this story alive, or just catching up with this thread

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/28/gender-critical-books-mein-kampf-public-library/

https://archive.ph/18DFg archive link

Seems like the Telegraph is going to turn this into a long running serial!

‘Woke’ libraries stock more trans than gender-critical books, data shows
Librarians accused of ‘behaving like bespectacled zealots in the culture war’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/28/woke-libraries-more-trans-gender-critical-books/ (behind pay wall but go to https://archive.ph and paste in Telegraph link above)

(a parallel discussion about libraries but in this case not stocking Glinner's book https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4923688-my-local-library-wont-be-stocking-graham-linehans-tough-crowd-anyone-else-had-the-same-response)

Politics in libraries has been a problem for years, tbh. In the US which seems to be the home of much of this, the American Library Association has long been fully captured by liberal politics, you can see it in the speakers they have at events, there is no effort to invite people from across the political spectrum. It can actually be quite difficult to be politically or socially conservative in the library world.

Many librarians in my experience seem to have no concept that they are politically biased. The rainbow flags are a good example, they are absolutely ubiquitous in libraries now, apparently to show they are welcoming safe spaces, but the library workers seem completely clueless that this may feel unwelcoming to some other patrons. I knew one who complained that some patrons would ask him about his views on LGBTQ politics and their own religious views on the topic, as it made him uncomfortable. It didn't occur to him that putting ideological symbols on his desk at work where he served patrons tended to make people think he had a certain political viewpoint and it was something that was up for public discussion.

Here's an interesting, if disappointing, reddit discussion among library workers about choosing books for the collection. You can see that many don't have any real commitment to intellectual freedom, they see themselves as gatekeepers:

(It's about 5 years old.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Libraries/comments/108pj4i/how_to_deal_with_books_from_altright_commentators/

Sorry, side issue, but why 'bespectacled'?

I hate that they say a book is 'banned' when they mean restricted to an appropriate age group. This seems to be a US and Canadian thing.

The Telegraph has contacted some LAs for comment which suggests they've got further articles planned.