Censorship and Selection: The Librarian as a Trustee of the Public's Right to Know

Bixler, Paul

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1447 Copy

Description

Title

Censorship and Selection: The Librarian as a Trustee of the Public's Right to Know

Author(s)

Bixler, Paul

Issue Date

1956

Keyword(s)

• Collection development (Libraries)
• Book selection

Abstract

At any given moment of time in any individual library the book collection is the payoff on the librarian's performance as selector (or as censor). The book collection is the basic evidence of the librarian's professional competence in choosing the materials he sets before the public. It indicates whether he understands the community his library is designed to serve, whether he is aware of public demand that is latent as well as that which is blatant, whether he has courage to reject as well as to buy, whether he sees the whole forest while he is selecting some of the trees. The book collection is the eating of the pie of selection. Yet it is so intimate and individual a matter both for the librarian and for the library user, it varies so in its content from library to library, that it is impossible to deal with it practically or in detail except in an extended report on a particular library. I doubt that I am competent to discuss the book collection in any library but my own. In any case there is not time to describe a total book collection even of a few thousand volumes. What I can do here is to discuss some of the conditions surrounding selection. This will mean giving somewhat more attention to the attitudes of the public and of librarians than to individual books. Books are important in themselves but as volumes on a library shelf they are, first of all, significant in relation to use and potential use within a particular community. Librarians are also to be seen within a social context, and before considering some of the details of their job as selectors, suppose we look at them in longer perspective.

Publisher

Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Series/Report Name or Number

Allerton Park Institute (3rd : 1956)

ISSN

0536-4606

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1447

Copyright and License Information

Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 1956

Owning Collections