As librarians, many of us like to believe our profession is a noble calling.We stand on the front lines of democracy, providing people with information on all topics and from all points of view so that they can educate themselves and come to informed opinions about both global issues and trivial pursuits.Unbiased materials selection is a vital part of this narrative; in fact, we have enshrined it the self-consciously named Library Bill of Rights, modeled on one of the core documents of American democracy.So, of course, most librarians would tell you that they would never practice censorship, or allow their professional work to reflect their personal biases.Many will describe their courage in the face of external pressures and challenges to their collections.But some of the most insidious pressure comes not from external opponents and would-be censors, but from within.Selfcensorship is tricky because it' s usually invisible-if a library is missing a book, nobody can say for certain why it' s missing.Perhaps the library used to have a copy, but it' s disappeared or fallen apart.Perhaps it was too expensive compared to similar items.Perhaps the collection on its subject was adequate already, and the selector thought it would be redundant.On the other hand, perhaps it was simply overlooked-all perfectly innocuous and acceptable answers, should anyone ever notice and ask.The innocuous answers, though, provide cover for the less commendable one: the book is missing because the librarian objected to the content, or anticipated controversy and wanted to avoid it, and preemptively censored her own selection.How do we catch ourselves when we begin to self-censor, and how do we prevent it?Is it ever possible to remove our own beliefs from our decision making about our collections?Jennifer Downey, a public librarian in California, explores these questions as they pertain to LGBT collection development.This is the first single-author installment of "Taking Issues"-partly, we admit, because we didn't want to ask a contributor to take the position, "Yes, I deliberately bias my collection to reflect my personal beliefs all the time, and I plan to continue."But, more seriously, we asked Downey to write on this topic in a way that reflects the nature of this debate in practice: a selector' s self-censorship happens in private, the result of a debate that largely takes place in his or her own head.We hope that the mental traps that Downey highlights on this issue will inform some librarians' internal debates.-EditorsS tudies have shown that the vast majority of libraries lack high-quality, comprehensive LGBT collections. 1 This goes for libraries large and small, urban and rural, in red states and in blue states.There are certainly a few exceptions, predominantly in large urban areas.
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 38 citations exist upstream.