For my fourth activity I chose the topic censorship and decided to review the journal article “Censorship of Library Collections: An Analysis Using Gatekeeping Theory” by Steele and Jennifer Elaine published in 2018. I chose this activity as it would require me to understand what I have read and make sure that I could put it into my own words. The article argues that systems and decisions that people and organisations make and set up can censor groups by silencing their voices by not letting them be heard in the first place. This caused me to think more deeply about this problem and more I thought about it, the more insidious I viewed the problem. Libraries have fought against books being banned, and an example of this is “banned book week” (Pekoll, 2019, p.8), but how can the library draw attention to voices that were never heard in the first place, especially when it can caused by structures that may be intentionally or inadvertently censoring people by silencing them. It may not just be a single person or institution that may be silencing them. The article mentions the idea of a series of gates that information travels through to get to any individual. The social, government or economic system may be set up in such a way that a particular group view may always end up being filtered out by different doors closing on them. The second thing that I found useful is the way that the article talked about the five levels of analysis which are individual, communication routines, organizational, social institution and the social system. I found the communication routines level the most relevant in my work life as I have often found that I will fall into a routine and I can easily see myself falling into habits that silence groups of people without realising it. This means that I must be aware of why I’m doing things, as well as keeping up to date with different techniques that are being adapting and developed to avoid censoring different groups. I can do this by studying journal articles and being familiar with what other institutions are doing to create an environment that fosters an open sharing of views and experiences, as well as finding out which practices and structures in those intrusion had caused problems.
The last thing the article brought up that I found was a gap in my knowledge was that library staff may feel the need to sensor work themselves, whether that is caused by the fear that they would lose their job or other problems it may cause. This is also not just a problem for public libraries but also for school libraries as they may feel a similar pressure to censor certain works (Williams, 2020, p.4). This made me realise that I do not have any strategies to deal with these types of pressure and that I will need to look into strategies that other librarians have put into place to help mitigate these pressures.
Reference
Pekoll, K. (2019). Beyond Banned Books: Defending Intellectual Freedom Throughout Your Library. American Library Association.
Steele, J.E. (2018). Censorship of Library Collections: An Analysis Using Gatekeeping Theory.
Collection management, 43 (4), 229-248. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1080/01462679.2018.1512917
Williams, R.N. (2020). Self-Censorship in Secondary School Libraries. ProQuest
Dissertations Publishing