Here & Now

Louise Robbins on Impacts of Book Ban Clashes on Communities

Zac Schultz:

An anonymous group is asking the Iron River Library to remove nearly 500 LGBTQ+ related materials from the public library and calling for the resignation of library board members. The town is located in Bayfield County in northern Wisconsin and has just a thousand residents. The request came in the form of a letter from concerned citizens. We were scheduled to speak with the director of the Iron River Library about this attempted book banning but the president of the library board cancelled our interview at the last minute. The president of the board told me over the phone they are trying to gather more facts about who is behind the letter, but the library director says they are not pulling the books. This follows a trend of conservative groups around the country attempting to remove books related to LGBTQ issues. Joining us is Louise Robbins, a UW-Madison professor emeritus of library information sciences and studies. Thanks for joining us today.

Louise Robbins:

Thank you for having me.

Zac Schultz:

So are there any parallels in history to this current movement to ban books, especially related to marginalized groups?

Louise Robbins:

Absolutely. It’s been going on for a long time. I think some of the most prominent examples are during the McCarthy period during the ’50s, there was a large group of attempts to sensor books related to communists but also to people of color. As it went along the — let me back up there a minute. They wanted to ban cheap paperbacks and comic books. One person testified before a congressional committee, said comic books would blow your boy’s brains out so they were rather alarmist about the effect of such things but the targets were people of color, Jewish people and nonbinary people then too. Then in 1958 for example, a book called “The Rabbits’ Wedding,” a children’s book with a black bunny and white bunny nearly caused the firing of the state librarian of Alabama, Emily Reed, because the state said it promoted interracial marriage. There was a group in the ’90s called Family Friendly Libraries, who attacked pretty much the same topics, like today’s Moms for Liberty. On and on.

Zac Schultz:

This seems to happen pretty regularly. What kind of impact can a request like this have on a small community?

Louise Robbins:

Well, in my experience, it can drive away people who don’t agree with protesters. That means in a community — a small community they might have a significant brain drain and it would split up the community so people who historically have worked well together now don’t. So it can have a big impact. The group I studied in Oklahoma in the ’50s, a large number of researchers with Phillips Petroleum fled and went elsewhere because they didn’t want their children to grow up in such a place. The same kind of thing could happen here though not on that scale, of course.

Zac Schultz:

That is right. So the books in question have to do with gender and sexuality. How do libraries assess what books on these topics go where in the interest of, you know, all families and children to make sure they are available but they are not right out in front if not appropriate?

Louise Robbins:

Well, there are several things they do. They consult reviews. They look at which are award-winning books. They have a committee often that decides on what they are going to include and what they are not. The number the concerned citizens cite is a number that is held in all the Northern Waters Library Service libraries apparently. Also on state e-book collections. So it is not anything that — if one library had 450 titles like that, it would be very lopsided. So what they try to do is provide for the reading interest of a wide variety of people and be sure they have things on various sides of an issue through consulting reviewers, quality lists and so on. Just the same way you would try to select a product for your home. You consult those reviews.

Zac Schultz:

So if there are parents or individuals that have concerns about some books in a library, what is the appropriate way to do it, to talk to a librarian about that?

Louise Robbins:

There is such a thing as a reconsideration form usually in most libraries or process. I do believe all of the libraries in the northern waters area have such a process. But first you have to have read the book. Then you have to identify the specific areas that are problematic. So that you don’t just go in with a list of 150 books and say all of these are bad. You have to know what you are talking about and make a logical complaint. There are a lot of ways to do that. Sometimes they result in a change in location for the — in shelving for the book but generally speaking, not removal unless the book is clearly beyond the margins.

Zac Schultz:

So we’ve got about a minute left. In your experience, has book banning ever worked? Are there examples of books small groups have targeted and have actually removed from the public discourse?

Louise Robbins:

I don’t believe they’ve ever been able to remove them completely. I know of one book in the history of the United States that’s had the plates broken and that was, like, in the ’40s or ’50s and it has since been reissued. I don’t know of others. Sometimes, however, an author can be hurt by having someone pre-judge their books before they ever get out there, which means their sales drop and they don’t have much opportunity to publish again. It is most important for voices that aren’t most frequently heard because they really don’t have — until recently, there haven’t been that many books published by minority voices. Now there is the opportunity to hear from a lot of people. Libraries are supposed to provide choices and be a place where ideas can duel it out. Not people but where ideas can challenge one another through your reading. It is a matter of choice, not of indoctrination.

Zac Schultz:

We will leave it there, Louise Robbins, UW-Madison professor emeritus, thanks for your time.

Louise Robbins:

Thank you.