Revolting librarians > How to annihilate library service to teenagers
Revolting librarians > How to annihilate library service to teenagers
Every story has at least two sides. My side needs to be told, then contrasted with the other side(s) to get the whole picture. I won't try to be too objective and fair to the opposition. Their opinion and power prevail, and all we dissenters can do is rail, writhe, and weep. But the fact remains that with the demise of my position, there are no Young Adult Librarians in public libraries in Orange County, California, where they are much needed.
My medium-sized public library, 50 miles from downtown Los Angeles, had never had service to teenagers. When library money was plentiful not so long ago, one of the fashionable items to acquire for the well-dressed library was a young Young Adult Librarian, as a symbol of a freeswinging approach to the New Librarianship. Fresh out of library school, looking 16 years old and hardly Establishment, I was hired. The director talked like the editorials in Library Journal read, and I was impressed and enthusiastic. I should have been tipped off right after orientation, when my boss asked me sub rosa not to buy Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones for the YA section, because the pre-marital pregnancy might rile some parent. From then on, I did what I thought a conscientious YA librarian ought to do, and seldom got away with it.
Shall I begin with the media, or the message? The message to teenagers in the library was outright hostility. What other library had an armed and uniformed policeman stationed in the YA study areas during peak evening hours? What other library confronted each boy as he entered to make sure he had his feet and chest covered? I know we were not alone in requiring written parental permission before we let anyone under 18 check out sex education materials, but even pregnant teenagers had to have a letter from home before they could find out how it happened.
Could I have been the only librarian ordered to remove from the YA walls posters of Joplin, Hendrix, John and Yoko, and even Picasso, because the personal morals of these artists might be offensive to some patron? Teenagers are certainly exasperating, but can responsible librarians justify treating any group of patrons as though they were a plague of locusts? Some of our staff made a practice of asking any young teenager, no matter how mature his request, if he had tried the children's department. All staff bemoaned the fact that adolescents are not adults, that they talk and giggle and flirt and talk back and rebel and do not act grown up in general. Children's poor behavior is tolerated; adult rudeness is excused; only teenagers are intolerable when imperfect.
The media involved a comedy of underhandedness. A thousand times I wished those supervisors of mine had just told me outright, "Don't be silly, child; we won't have that sort of trash in our library." Instead, on various occasions my book and magazine orders were lost, stolen or strayed. If the book arrived and was too objectionable, it was sent back to the publisher posthaste before I saw it. If the book arrived and was objectionable, but I caught it in time and made a fuss, it might go on the Dirty Book Shelf, hidden from the public in the sorting room and requiring proof of over-18 age to get a book fetched from it. This was done with The Beatles' Illustrated Lyrics, because of its avant-garde cartoons of naked people.
If the book was too objectionable and I still made a big fuss, it was presented to the Library Board for a decision. This was done with the works of Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. I lost. And on one memorable occasion, I stumbled on a YA book that had been processed for circulation but found too repulsive. The book pocket and card were torn out and the book thrown in the trash. I retrieved it, but hadn't the heart to battle for it. It was The Free People, which had pictures of a commune-ful of people doing their things, not always fully clothed.
The list of books simply rejected when requested staggers my memory. The best-known that I recall was the Last Whole Earth Catalog, now a bestseller, and we still don't have it, apparently because it has four-letter words in the text. (At last count the library had 8 copies of Portnoy's Complaint and 10 of The Love Machine.)
The list of magazines rejected is a special thorn in my side. When I requested some of the more liberal, even underground, publications, I wanted to accomplish three main goals: 1) to balance the collection against the squadrons of National Review, Plain Truth, U.S. News, Smoot Report and other conservative and ultra-conservative periodicals with which our collection abounded; 2) to fill the many requests from teen- and college-aged patrons for specific magazines; 3) to add worthwhile and relevant material, in order to give the best and broadest service to our city. I asked for The Realist, Mad, the L.A. Free Press, Surfing, Ramparts, 'Teen, Rolling Stone, Out of Sherwood Forest (Orange County's only homegrown underground newspaper,) NOW (the National Organization of Women's publication, surely the most reasonable of the current feminist periodicals,) and many others. I quoted at length from good reviews, notably from Katz' Magazines for Libraries. I enclosed samples of most of the magazines with my requests. I was prepared to defend my choices against stiff argument.
The response was silence. Despite my repeated inquiries, not one of the long and carefully-prepared lists of magazines was ever ordered, and no reason for their rejection ever told to me. Meanwhile, the newspaper Human Events, one of the most politically conservative broadsides I'd ever seen, was added.
But the final outrage perpetrated by this brash, unconscionable YA Librarian was to get other librarians to defend my views. I had been attending the meetings of the Young Adult Reviewers of Southern California. YAR is a lively group of YA and high school librarians who meet monthly to review new books and discuss YA work. These meetings convinced me that I was not overstepping the bounds of responsible librarianship by trying to oppose the unwritten censorship code of my library. Once I had explained some of my problems to the group, they rallied to my defense. They said the solution would be to open the eyes of my supervisors to the prevailing YA trends. We planned to re-review some controversial YA selections of the year at a special meeting, at my library, to which all supervisors would be invited. We planned to define some YA selection policies, and show our united front on matters of principle, thereby gaining new respect and opening avenues of communication. And we did. And we had a record attendance. And all the YA and high school librarians brought their supervisors. And some of the long-term disagreement between boss and YA librarian exploded on the floor.
We were saddened but not surprised to find how many directors thought we were very wrong to make available to teenagers such items as sex manuals (Boys and Sex,) novels with sexual encounters and four-letter words (Love Story,) books advocating or describing radical behavior and ideas (Do It,) books describing drug use (The Drug Scene,) and student underground publications (How Old Will You Be In 1984?). We were relieved to get these feelings into the open, but the residue of bitterness and discord has not yet completely dissipated.
After that it was over for me. A minor position was found for me at a branch library, and no Young Adult Services are offered by the library now.
Those years were not a total loss. I learned a great deal. I started a successful amateur film program; I added lots of paperbacks and rock records (with the aid of our with-it music librarian.) And in spite of it all, I enjoyed myself tremendously.
What would I have done if I'd had a free hand? Nothing so very revolutionary. A teenager deserves a library that recognizes reality. He needs an information source and study area that does not impose arbitrary, crippling rules on him. His library should recognize that dignity and silence are not prior requisites to learning.
My YA library would have more pillows and rugs on the floor than tables, and conversation areas and music in the air and chess corners, and librarians who like people. The least a library can do for a teenager is to provide some of what he wants as well as what the library has decided he needs. He would like posters and art prints, records and tapes and cassette players, some material free to keep (perhaps discarded paperbacks.) He would like circulating films and a film room to try them out. He would like tv. He would like headphones and tape recorders at each table, because a huge proportion of 1972 teenagers can't study in the quiet. He would like some plain old junk, like comic books, sex novels, hot rod magazines and scroungy underground newspapers. He would like, needs and deserves for other people to stop trying to protect him and allow him the right to choose information for himself.
None of this is new. It has all been practiced in Venice, Mountain View, NYC and other places. But it is not the norm. Most of all the teenager needs people in libraries to recognize and accept him as a respectable human being. That is not the norm either.