What you shouldn't be reading

How do libraries deal with material its patrons find offensive? In the wake of the West Bend censorship campaign (ongoing though upstaged in outrage by He Who Shall Not Be Named), CityRoom explains how the Brooklyn Public Library handled a recent complaint against a Tintin book. But we can't let this pass without comment:

At a library run by [former Connecticut Library Association president Alice] Knapp, she said there was a complaint from a member of her own staff about Alan Moore’s LOST GIRLS, for sexual explicitness. Ms. Knapp considered reclassifying the novel as an “823,” a call number that would effectively hide the book inside the vast literature department where erotica was parked, or leaving it where it was, grouped in plain sight with other “graphic novels.”

She chose to tough it out.

Why? “It was in constant circulation,” she said. “The reviews for it were outstanding, and then we decided we bought it to be used, going back to the idea that books should be used. That’s why we’re buying them.”

First, I wonder if there was a City Room debate over whether to print the "hidden" call number on the blog. Hey, it's cool, if they're on the Internet, they're not going to the library anyway. Second, I haven't read LOST GIRLS (if you're also unfamiliar, Neil Gaiman's review should get you briefed) but would have assumed most libraries wouldn't have bought it in the first place, so as not to face that decision. I couldn't find it in the NYPL catalog when I looked today.

Third, I would be interested in a similar piece on cases of offense-related defacement, as I once thought I might have seen (but probably didn't). And finally, do the libraries count written requests for removal that are composed entirely of obscenities? I don't know if that was my letter they got about Ann Coulter.