Connecticut librarians want help against harrassment
HARTFORD — Librarians from around the state say they want help from legislators to protect them — and the reading public — from opponents who want to remove more and more books from shelves. The request comes as they face verbal attacks and threats from people challenging and attempting to ban books as part of a nationwide culture war.
What's at stake in the growing nationwide challenge against particular books, including LGBTQ+ books carefully selected by certified librarians, is the intellectual freedom of school children and young adults who deserve access to reading materials that are being opposed by a small percentage of conservative adults in their communities, the librarians said.
Challenges against individual books is soaring, said Sarah McCusker, president of the Connecticut Library Association and the librarian in the town of Canton. “While we here in Connecticut may feel that sometimes that this is a problem that largely happens elsewhere, that's not true,” she said. “Connecticut was one of 10 states where more than 100 titles were challenged during the first eight months of 2023. This puts us in the company of Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Florida and Texas. It's important to know that not all challenges are on the news.”
She warned of proposed legislation around the country that would redefine obscenity statutes and expose librarians to arrest and firing, at a time when even in Connecticut, librarians are being harassed. Higher profile book challenges occurred this year in towns including Colchester, Old Lyme, Guilford, with lesser conflicts in other towns, said Katie Huffman, director of the Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library in Old Lyme.
“The library had acquired the books in recent years to update the collections to better address the concerns and experiences of today's youth and to be more inclusive of LGBTQplus experiences,” said Huffman, noting that among the 135 signatures on the complaint, were elected officials including two of the three members of the Board of Selectmen, the Board of Education and the Board of Finance.
“The library board and staff found themselves at the center of intense, sometimes vitriolic public debate and subject to significant public pressure and media attention,” Huffman said. “The library board were ultimately able to consider the two positively reviewed, widely available teen titles and determined that they did indeed meet the criteria set forth in the collection and warranted inclusion in the library. Many members of the public fundamentally misunderstand the library's role in the community.”
Paul Freeman, superintendent of schools in Guilford with 32 years of experience in state public education, said he had been unacquainted with any book challenges until this year, when opposition to LGBTQ+ books in his town began as “outrage” on social media posts and eventually became official challenges that expanded to Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison's early book “The Bluest Eye,” which has been taught in Advanced Placement English for about 30 years.
“Last year in Guilford we experienced five book challenges,” Freeman said, noting that targeted books had been in the high school library for months and years but no one had checked them out. “There were a number of community members who decided that they were going to complain about books that we had in our collections. As I looked further into the books that were being called out, it became clear that the concern was not of local origin.” When the complaints finally reached official challenges, “they were commenting on the characters, the type of people represented in those texts, and the texts all focused on LGBTQ and BIPOC characters,” Freeman said, using the acronym for Black, Indigenous, and people of color.
“Students in our system who identify with those characters were feeling that insult as well,” Freeman said, stressing that media specialists were targeted by the complainants.
The formal challenges against the single copies of books available to students, were rejected by the local school board. A similar controversy occurred earlier this year in Newtown.
About 80 librarians from throughout the state filled a meeting room in the Legislative Office Building during a forum in which a small number of state lawmakers, led by state Rep. Christine Palm, D-Chester, and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, listened to their testimony on intellectual freedom, free speech and the right to read.
“We need to ensure that everyone in the state of Connecticut has the freedom to read,” said Ellen Paul, executive director of the Middltown-based Connecticut library Consortium, noting that there about 1,000 libraries in the state, including various schools, institutions of higher learning and local public libraries that are located in 167 of the 169 towns and cities. “We want to ensure that everyone feels welcome in our libraries; that you can walk into any library across the state of Connecticut and you can find yourself in a book, that you know you belong.”
E-book charges soaring in Connecticut
The librarians also warned that under current copyright law and contracts, they are spending millions of dollars on ebooks that literally disappear within two years of purchase. They noted that a bill that died in the state House of Representatives earlier this year that would have given libraries more leverage in negotiating contract terms, was pulled from debate on the last day of the legislative session in June after minority Republicans attempted to amend it with changes to state campaign-finance law.
Paul said that libraries require extensive e-books collections to serve the needs of disabled readers, those who lack transportation, or need to increase the size of the written words to make it easier to read.
“Here in 2023, e-books are six to 10 times more expensive than a print book and most e-books that libraries rent are metered, meaning that they disappear from our digital shelves after two years or 26 borrows, whichever comes first,” Paul said. “What really gets us is that these e-books are paid for with tax dollars.” Some borrowers have to wait as long as six months before gaining access to a particular e-books.
Kyle Courtney, director of copyright and Information policy for Harvard University, who attended the session with lawmakers, suggested that the General Assembly try again to set terms with publishers for e-books contracts. “I want to make sure that any law we're considering here, could ensure that the convenience of technological access to digital works, doesn't also undermine the library mission via restrictive licensing,” said Courtney, who is also co-founder of the Library Futures Institute.
“All libraries in Connecticut are dealing with bad licensing that is not only against the service of their mission but it's harmful to the public and patrons at large,” Courtney said. “The license-only culture that you've heard about today, we've talked about we're leasing our collections, we're renting our collections, that shift is shocking. The idea is that it's a grave risk to long-term access and preservation for patrons now but also patrons in our future. So, if we have these licenses that directly impact the ability for us to serve our materials for education, research, entertainment, general learning, then we need to change the license, right? That would be one of the keys here.”