Jessamine County Library Moves Its GNs

Amy Wilson has filed another meaty article on the ongoing story of graphic novels in the Jessamine Country library. Two library workers were let go this year when it was discovered they had checked out the library's copy of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier to keep it out of the hands of any children who might want to read it, and one child who was asking for it specifically. The library workers proclaimed they were trying to protect the children from unsuitable material in counter core library policy of not stepping between material and readers qualified to see it.

While there's been no change in the status of those workers, the graphic novels section -- criticized for its proximity to the young adult section -- will be moved to an adult section of the library. The library's representative, who has apparently been threatened with physical harm by some idiot or idiots on just the lines asserted by the fired library workers, cast the decision as one that came after many options were researched and that was responsive to the concerns of the community while respecting standard library practice and the First Amendment issues involved.

Wilson's piece says that the library believes this decision well-received.

Because of the First Amendment issues involved, CR asked Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Executive Director Charles Brownstein for comment on this latest permutation to the story. "Public libraries have an obligation to serve the needs and desires of the community that supports and uses them. To that end, moving the graphic novels into the adult collection was a good solution," Browstein says. "It preserves access to material that the public has a desire and, more importantly, right, to access, while addressing concerns raised by the community about the content and subject matter within some graphic novels not necessarily being fit for younger members of that community. No books were banned, and library policies still appear to uphold a policy of general access, and those are good things."

Brownstein did express a level of regret over the process. "What's more troubling is the way those concerns were raised -- with threats of physical harm and acts of guerrilla censorship. A civil society requires civil solutions. Jessamine's library officials should be applauded for their commitment to protecting the First Amendment rights of their community, and for being attentive to their community's concerns. But their more radical opponents should be ashamed for using censorship and threats where discourse was required."

The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier was was created by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. It was published by DC/WildStorm in 2008. A spokesperson at DC declined comment for this article.

According to Wilson's piece the library workers originally involved seemed to be among those who were happy with this specific outcome, although one rattled a rhetorical saber about the library better responding to the tax base that seemed to indicate she wasn't satisfied with the latest news as a final outcome.
 
posted 8:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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