Persecution or Hijinks?
Good reporting is often hard to find. It is a rare thing for the beat reporter (or student reporters) to dig deeper on a routine story. Most of the time this isn’t a problem, but when you start dealing with stories that hint at persecution a little research is imperative. Two different stories dealing with modern Paganism raise the question of persecution, and are frustrating in their lack of detail and research.
First you have a story about books on Wicca and the occult going missing at the Stark County libraries in Ohio.
“Vicki Muzzy, collection development manager for the Stark County District Library, said the district’s 10 branches are missing 25 copies of books dealing with Wicca, one of the world’s oldest pagan religions and often associated with witchcraft. All the books have been checked out, but they never were returned, she said.”
So why are they missing? Library Executive Director Kent Oliver gives us two theories on the missing books.
“People take them because they don’t want other people to read about witchcraft, and people use them without returning them. I think we have a little bit of both going on.”
After that the article interviews a couple librarians, and ends with a quote about libraries being “content neutral”. So the reader is left to guess if this is more a case of Christians stealing the books to keep them out of the hands of the youth, or if it is more a case of the youth stealing the books because they couldn’t attain them otherwise. Commenters on Witchvox are split on the culprits, and I can’t help but think that a little more digging and time spent developing the story could have given a clearer picture of why all of the Wicca books are missing.
A similar problem can be found in the Mills College Weekly. Here we have a case of posters being defaced on campus, and the terminology “hate crime” being thrown around. But I can’t find any reporting on the issue by the paper, instead we get an editorial after the fact.
“We at The Weekly feel it is time for us to respond to recent events on campus that can only be categorized as hate crimes. From the posters put up in protest of Columbus Day in the Fall of 2005 that were taken down to the recent defacement of posters from the Muslim Student Association, the Mills Disability Alliance and the Pagan Alliance, we have a growing and serious problem here on the Mills campus.”
What were they defaced with? Slogans? Hate speech? A big “X”? The paper doesn’t say. Also, while one could see a radical right-winger defacing Muslim and Pagan flyers why the disability group? Is it persecution, or is it a group of drunken college students destroying a bunch of flyers? Again some basic reporting on the event could have given us the context to decide if these actions were part of a hate crime, or simply shenanigans.
Considering the increasingly polarized religious culture we live in, it becomes imperative to expect a higher level of journalism than vague allusions and outraged editorials. Both of these stories could have been important stories that revealed something about the day to day struggles of our faith communities. Instead of answers we are left with more questions and fuel for those looking to prove persecution.
7 responses so far
This is potentially one of those cases where the professional standard of librarianship makes the question more difficult to solve. Oliver’s probably right, but most libraries in the U.S. do not keep records of who has checked out a book in the past (we do keep count of how many times a book is checked out, though, because when the time comes to remove a book from a collection usage is our major criterion) and we don’t reveal who has a book currently checked out for anything other than a properly executed search warrant or subpeona. So Joe Reporter isn’t going to find out for the asking.
If people are removing them from the library without checking them out, better security can help (RFID is favorite, but expensive; tattle-tape is cheaper but easier to circumvent). If people are checking them out and not returning them, about all we can do is slap a replacement cost on their account (which is typically more than the book actually costs, so if they really want their own copies they should friggin’ buy them).
Keeping them behind the reference desk isn’t a good solution because people are afraid to ask librarians for things, especially if the subject is a sensitive one. (We don’t bite, honest!)
Content neutrality is kind of a misnomer. What we usually mean by that is that our personal politics or morality does not come into play when choosing library materials. That isn’t to say, though, that we buy just anything. No library in the world is big enough to do that.
My money is on people who want the books but are afraid to have anyone know they’re interested in them, and thus don’t check them out or buy them. People who have issues with books often feel the need to editorialize, either by defacing them or by challenging them, which is how banned books happen.
My local library doesn’t have the money to secure its collection. One of the librarians told me that every time they put a book about Bruce Springsteen on the shelf it disappears within a week. (I live in NJ).
Pagans can donate good used books to their local libraries or raise funds for a special pagan book fund. Most libraries would not turn them down and would even place a nice “donated by ___” sticker inside the front cover.
Another thing that needs to be looked into is the fucntion of the disabilities group. The defacement of their posters might well have been a politically oriented hate crime. Some of these groups tend to be very politically activist, and engage in the same level of political correctness that inspire so much anger for otehr groups. At one time they were publicly insisting that the terms “mentally retarded” be dropped, for one example.
As for the pagan books missing from the libraries, my guess is they are being quietly done away with by the library staff due to complaints by Christian groups. That’s just a guess though. If they were being checked out, and not returned, there should be a record of it.
Anne Johnson:
My local library doesn’t have the money to secure its collection. One of the librarians told me that every time they put a book about Bruce Springsteen on the shelf it disappears within a week.
Lack of money is the principal issue. RFID is the most secure method available, but it’s very, very expensive. The more usual method is tattle-tape, but this can be removed by someone with sufficient motivation–it’s just a strip of wire inside a layer of sticky tape, and it’s not even attached to the book.
And some places can’t afford even that, which leads to the problem you describe. The public system I worked in in high school had no security system at all.
Pagan Temple:
As for the pagan books missing from the libraries, my guess is they are being quietly done away with by the library staff due to complaints by Christian groups.
Any librarian that behaved in such a way would be in egregious violation the ethical standards of the profession. I have to say that, given how much work librarians do to make the process of challenging books transparent, and to keep challenged books on shelves, I’m a little offended at the suggestion. (Could it happen? Sure. However, I think the assumption is unwarranted.)
That is, of course, something the reporter could have checked into a little more thoroughly–whether books had been checked out and never returned, or simply stolen.
-rimrunner @ LJ
rimrunner-I’m kind of speaking from experience. A lot of these small town libraries are badly underfunded, and depend on donations, of money and books, as well as fund raising efforts, such as book fairs, etc. That puts more pressure on them from civic and other such groups. The library in my little town, a very conservative Christian area, is an example of a library that functions-baely so-in this way.
The number of occult, New Age, pagan books you can find there would require the use of a divining rod. They are very few, and far between. When you have to request that your library borrow books by people like Scott Cunningham from other libraries, that gives you an idea.
Plus, after three or so such requests, which were granted, the lady who was the head librarian at the time started giving me this snotty attitude, even accussed me once of owing a fine that I know I didn’t owe. It was only a dime, but I told her I didn’t owe it. I knew she was just being a little bitch. Anyway, she knocked off the fine. Sure, it was only a dime, but it was the principle.
So this idea that all librarians are saints who would never betray their higher ideals just don’t cut it with me. They are in many cases just like any other county employees, in my case it’s a position that has been handed down more or less through three generations of the same family.
In my wife’s and my experience with both libraries and bookstores, where we both have worked, books on “the occult” are most often stolen by occultists themselves.
These people frequently think that “mere humans” cannot comprehend the material in the books, nor should they be allowed to make silly rules about how godlike adepts might acquire them.