Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler. Source: Amazon.com
Many years ago, a friend told me about an experience with conflict among library staff concerning multiculturalism at a theological graduate school. While working at this library, several thousand books on Neopaganism were donated to the library by a local Wiccan community including many important texts like Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon. Up to this point, the library’s collection on Neopaganism was fairly minimal—the majority of books in the collection related to the topic were critiques of Neopaganism by Christian authors.
Since the school had increasingly attracted Neopagan students over the past decade, many library staff people were excited about the possibility to develop the collection in this direction to support these students’ work. Other staff people, however, were resistant to the idea of including these books in the collection. Some argued that the books were against the Christian mission of the school. These staff believed that accepting the books into the collection would be an endorsement of Neopaganism and would take up space that could be used for Christian books.
During the course of this heated discussion, one librarian pointed out that the library already had reasonable collections on some other non-Christian traditions. Neopaganism was being treated as a special case by some staff, likely because of popular Christian misconceptions about Neopaganism, as well as discomfort or even open hostility toward “witchcraft.” Because of other values, these staff failed to follow the cardinal rule of librarianship: censorship is wrong.
After one librarian mentioned that some patrons might seek to vandalize these books if they were placed on the shelves, the full staff compromised and decided to place the books in special collections—accessible by special request, but otherwise behind lock and key. However, these books were not prioritized for cataloging, and as such, they mostly gathered dust because most patrons did not know that they even existed.
Sometime later, after the overall culture and values of the library staff and school changed, these books were “rediscovered,” catalogued, and shelved in the main stacks. It is unfortunate, however, that several classes of students at this school could not benefit from having access to these books. While all librarians must necessarily weigh many different values, they should not compromise over the censorship of voices—particularly when such censorship is grounded in intolerance and hate of already marginalized communities. If security is an issue, librarians must not give up on fostering a multicultural-friendly environment and accede to threats; they must increase security without minimizing the true goal of libraries—information access. Information is never monolithic, and libraries become empty structures when they lose sight of this fact.
Second Gen Buddhist 