Librarians Rely on Book Sense, Reviews in Stocking Shelves

A critic’s review praised the novel’s treatment of “an unusual aspect of love.” Officials at the Thousand Oaks Library thought that sounded good, so they ordered the book.

The novel arrived and was placed on the shelves. Only after a patron complained was it discovered that the unusual aspect was bestiality. The book was subsequently deemed inappropriate and pulled from the shelves.

Kathleen Sullivan, who oversees book selection at the library, said this case was one of only a few instances of censorship at the Thousand Oaks library in the past decade. Indeed, censorship is a dirty word among librarians.

“We prefer to call it selection,” Sullivan said. “It’s not that we try to keep any ideas away from the public. But, if they say ‘ick’ about that book, no one would be reading it and it would be gathering dust on the shelf. We are trying to buy books that people want to read.”

The incident illustrates the difficulties librarians face in choosing which books to put on the shelves.

Buys 25,000 Annually

The Thousand Oaks library purchases about 25,000 books a year. Burbank Public Library buys about 12,000 annually. The Los Angeles city and county library systems buy almost that many each month.

Smaller libraries are limited by small budgets. Large libraries must satisfy many communities with varied reading interests. And librarians must consider what they admit are nebulous guidelines regarding what is appropriate for a library collection.

“People think we have everything in the library, but you have to draw the line somewhere as far as good taste,” said Sandra Christopher, an assistant library services director for the Burbank library. “You just know by looking at a book if it’s something you would find at a public library.”

All the library systems in the Los Angeles area follow a somewhat standardized routine for selecting and ordering books. There is a selection committee, usually made up of several library administrators and several branch librarians. Each committee member is given an area of concern, often a section of the Dewey Decimal System that libraries use to categorize books.

For instance, Chuck Billodeaux, a regional adult-collection coordinator for the county library, is responsible for 000 to 200 on the library shelves. This means he must suggest which books the library needs in the fields of computer technology (000), psychology (100) and religion (200).

Rely on Reviews

It would be impossible for committee members to read each book, so they pore over book-review publications. These can range from the New York Times Book Review to the Library Journal to Romantic Times, which reviews only romance novels. Billodeaux said he reads as many as 15 review magazines a week.

Perhaps more important input comes from those committee members who work in branch libraries. They keep track of what kinds of books are being checked out and what the public is asking for that the library does not have.

“These people are out on the reference desk, they are out talking to the patrons and hearing what they need,” Sullivan said. “They’re not sitting in little boxes reading reviews. They’re out there having contact with the patrons.”

Both Billodeaux and Christopher, of the Burbank library, said librarians gain a sense of what their patrons want.

Develop Sense of What’s Needed

“When I first started, years ago, I wondered ‘Gee, am I ordering the right thing?’ ” recalled Christopher, who has worked in libraries 22 years. “Over the years, you get used to the community and what their interests are. You can go to the bookstore and look on the shelves and you can tell what people in the community will want to read.”

However, reading interests vary from branch to branch. At the central Burbank library, in the downtown, business books and magazines are most popular. At the northwest branch, patrons yearn for mysteries.

“They have a lot of senior citizens in that neighborhood,” Christopher explained.

The problem is compounded for Billodeaux, who must order books for all of Los Angeles County. He said that, whereas readers in East Los Angeles might be interested in a religious book dealing with Latino reaction to Catholicism, Malibu readers would prefer a book written by a best-selling religious writer, such as Robert Schuller or Norman Vincent Peale.

“There certainly is a responsibility,” he said. “We want to present all the views that we can.”

Vague Guidelines

And there is the question of censorship, of what does and does not belong in a library. All of the librarians interviewed insisted that they do not censor books, short of pornography. None could say where that line is drawn. Several said books with explicit sexual photographs or drawings might be avoided. Otherwise, they explained the process in vague terms, saying each book is judged on its own merit.

Most libraries have a written policy, but these offer no greater insight. The policy for the city library system states that committee members should be flexible and open-minded when considering books. It goes on to say that each book must be judged by “its own kind of excellence and the audience for whom it is intended. There is no single standard . . . .”

“I list books that I find personally offensive,” said Jennifer Lambelet, adult services coordinator for the city library. “We circulate over 10 million books a year, so you can’t go by individual taste. If the book is controversial, that means the public wants to have it. So we will have it.”

Novels Draw Most Complaints

As with other libraries, the city system has a process by which the committee will consider pulling a book if a patron complains. Lambelet said patrons most often complain about modern novels, which she said readers find far more explicit than those written in the past. Lambelet said she could not recall a book being pulled from city library shelves, but several have been moved from the juvenile to the adult section.

Of course, books placed in the children’s section receive far greater scrutiny as to sexual and violent content. Justification for censorship there is more readily apparent. In the adult section, the need for intervention is not so clear, she said.

Sometimes, though, considerations go beyond a question of taste. Several years ago, the Thousand Oaks library decided not to order a book about euthanasia because it contained detailed instructions for committing suicide.

City Attorney’s Warning

“The city attorney warned us against it,” Sullivan said. “We felt there could be a danger of liability if someone took his life and our book was found on the table next to his suicide note.”

From such sources--reviews, public requests and committee discussion--the library draws up a list of books it will purchase. At smaller libraries, every book on the list will be bought. At larger libraries such as the city and county systems, which have much longer lists, branch librarians choose according to their branch budget.

Librarians say their system is not infallible. As with the case of the book on bestiality, reviews can be deceiving. And there can be snags in other areas of the procedure. Mariko Kaya, chief of technical services for the county library, recalled a now-retired branch librarian who was less than objective in ordering books for her branch.

“She was interested in cookbooks so she would buy every cookbook on the list, even though the community there didn’t read them,” Kaya said.

Yet, librarians say, the system works. The most important thing, they say, is to get as many books, and as many types of books on the shelves as possible.

“The role of the public library in American society is the free flow of information,” Lambelet said. “What one person may not want, another person will. It is our responsibility to provide them with that information.”