Design Example: An Alternative to Censorship

This is a short design proposal of how to handle disagreements about what books should be in libraries. I'm proud of how organized the writing is: there's a clear and informed problem statement at the beginning, and a clear set of three design features. I also like the insight in the limitations; its hard to imagine worst cases, but I think I did a good job here. The weakest part of the proposal is that it doesn't engage with the status quo very well — how exactly is this different from current book challenge processes and current state law? Because I was rushed in preparing for class, I didn't spend the time to research those processes and laws and how they vary, so I'm not confident that my proposal is compatible with current law or practices, or even redundant with them. Because of that, I'd likely give this a 3.6. I could have probably gotten to a 4 by doing more rigorous research about those two elements.

An Alternative to Censorship

Amy J. Ko

Since the beginning of public libraries, there have been public processes for deliberating about what content a library should and should not contain. These processes are reasonable, at one level, because libraries cannot contain everything: it takes real work to curate and maintain collections, including significant cataloging and indexing labor, and if the content is printed, there are constraints on how many books can be stored and made accessible to the public. Even in the age of digital books, storage is not infinite or free, copies and licenses are not free, and maintaining the software required to make digital content discoverable is not free. These physical and financial constraints mean that libraries have choices to make about what content to prioritize, and so in the case of public libraries, it is reasonable to involve the public in those decisions.

However, in the past few years, these public processes for deliberation have been weaponized by Christian nationalists to try to remove information about gender diversity, racial diversity, and faith diversity. In one sense, their goals are aligned with the spirit of the curation problem: they're engaging in a conversation about what content should a prioritized given limited space. Their position is that content about the diversity of human experience should not be prioritized, and that only those aligned with their faith and values should be prioritized. When those positions are reinforced by state law (e.g., Florida's HB 1577 Links to an external site., which bans instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in schools), then those curatorial decisions are taken out of the hands of librarians and the public, and instead made by elected representatives. The result is that people marginalized by their gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion are further marginalized, in order to reinforce the power of the dominant groups.

How can public libraries meet the legal obligations decreed by dominant groups, while also affirming, informing, and celebrating those on the margins? Rather than removing books from libraries, and waiting for marginalized groups to somehow gain democratic power despite being in the minority, I have an alternative proposal. It comes in three parts, each self-reinforcing.

First, we begin by passing laws that clearly state that libraries, the information they contain, and the curatorial choices they make, must serve all citizens, not just those with political power. This legal framework would reinforce that the public libraries are public institutions, and are intended to serve the whole public, not just part of it. This would ensure that groups on the margins would be able to find content about their communities, to help them understand their history, challenges, and contributions. But it would also ensure that dominant groups can also find content that reinforce their values, even if they are hegemonic in nature. This baseline would mean that libraries reflect their entire communities, including all of the parts of it that some people wish did not exist.

Second, there would be a public process for proposing content for inclusion in the collection. This would mean that rather than librarians centralizing curation, and then opening up censorship to the public, they would do the reverse: the public would help shape what content exists to ensure that meets the legal requirement above of reflecting community voices, and then librarians would use their discretion to ensure that goal is upheld while accounting for constraints on resources and space. This public process would not allow for public dissent — a citizen could not "block" a proposal, for example — but all citizens would be able to contribute common on their dissent. As librarians find that they need to remove content from their collection due to space constraints, there would also be opportunity for public comment on its removal, to ensure that content that is valuable to some group in the community is not removed.

Third, and finally, all content would come with metadata about the public opinion on the work. This metadata would be curated from the public comment on the submission proposal, if there was any, and include metadata like when the comment was made, who made it, and how they described their positionality when they made the comment. This not only archives historical context of why the content was included, but also provides information for parents and youth who are seeking content to know what controversies surround the media, if any. This not only helps everyone decide whether it is appropriate for themselves, or their children, but it also helps them have context for the content's social significance.

While this design change to public library curation would likely result in collections resulting in a greater diversity of perspectives, it does have potential downsides. For example, for their perspectives to be included in resistant communities, groups on the margins might have to organize to make proposals, and be subjected to hateful speech about their communities and identities. And that speech would be archived and made permanently visible every time they seek affirming content from the library. This creates an asymmetry, as dominant groups, even though they might face the same experiences with their content, would likely experience it at a smaller scale. It also risks creating an easier "attack vector" for hate speech: currently, this hateful speech happens in school board meetings and on bureaucratic forms. If there were public venues for these comments, it may further amplify divisions between communities.

While these risks of harm are real, it is hard to see them as worse than the status quo, where groups on the margins have no way to ensure content they want is available, and no way of commenting on the work that dominant groups want to be included. This proposal might be a way to help groups with divergent views live together better — not necessarily in harmony, but at least alongside each other in the same public spaces.