by Madeline Colley ’24
Book censorship–be it banning, burning, or even just challenging–is anything but a new phenomenon. Since humans began writing, it seems some opposed whatever information was being
shared. According to Freedom to Read, a cooperative campaign between the Book and Periodical Council, Library and Archives Canada, and others, the first reported instance of book censorship may have been as early as 259-210 B.C.E. Supposedly, the Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti buried 406 Confucian scholars alive and burned all the books in his kingdom so that “history could be said to begin with him.” Over the nearly 2300 years since Shih Huang Ti, there have been innumerable attempts to ban books and control information. Writings like The Odyssey, translations of the Bible, Shakespeare’s Richard II—even things like Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter—have been challenged or outright banned.
But why? The reasoning for book challenges varies wildly, and that reasoning is sometimes wild in itself. Reportedly, The Diary of Anne Frank was challenged in Alabama for being “a real downer.” Today, however, book challenges overwhelmingly target marginalized communities. Authors or characters who are people of color, transgender, or belong to the LGBTQIA+ community often find themselves on the chopping block. Challengers cite that the information in these books is sexually explicit, profane, or, in some cases, a threat to a specific ideology. Moreover, these book challenges implicate that it is shameful to be, or even to wonder, about these things–and the damage that can cause is profound (and is worthy of its own article, but if you’re curious to know more, check out this article by Information Matters).
In 1982, in response to a rise in book challenges, Banned Books Week was launched—an annual event typically held the last week of September. Cochise College Libraries are celebrating the event. In an interview with Cochise College Director of Library Services Karly Scarborough, she shared information about book challenges and Banned Books Week.
Maddie: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Cochise College?
Karly: So, my name is Karly Scharborough. I’m the Director of Library Services here and have been here at the college since 2005. I kind of started as a work-study and just moved up the ladder.
Maddie: Wow!
Karly: So, I’ve been here for a really long time, and I’m very passionate, obviously, about libraries. It was not my career choice at first. It diverged a few years ago. I was working in the library, and one of our librarians said, “You should do this.” And, like, I don’t know why it hadn’t clicked before. So, it’s something I’m very passionate about. Becoming director in 2021, I became more involved in the Arizona Library Association (ALA). I’m the president-elect and will take over as president of that in October. That has kind of spearheaded this campaign for advocacy because, as Samuel talked about in his presentation, and as we’ve all seen since 2019—like, there was a quiet year of 2020—and then everybody just was like, kind of out the gate running for the bans and challenges. And everything that we kind of see going on.
Maddie: Yeah.
Karly: And, so, being a part of ALA has afforded me some advocacy sessions that I’ve done through the ALA. And, so, I’ve done an advocacy workshop. I’m also a Law for Librarian Cohort, which started in May. And that’s training librarians, without giving legal advice, to help other librarians know the laws that are protecting us, basically, the First Amendment law that is protecting us, from some of these really egregious bills that are trying to be passed. And how we can fight against those.
Maddie: Yeah, that’s awesome.
Karly: Yeah, so, that’s kind of through the Office for Intellectual Freedom and the ALA. And Samuel came in, and I was not aware of the PEN American Foundation, and I was vaguely aware of the Freedom to Read, just through those other avenues, and so it was great that we had a student interested—our own Cochise student, not someone else, who was interested in starting this. He wanted to do his banned books presentation and has kind of helped spearhead moving that forward here at Cochise.
Maddie: That’s really incredible to see that degree of activism from fellow students. For how long has Cochise College honored Banned Books Week?
Karly: Every year since I’ve been here, basically. Yeah, as far as I can remember, we’ve always celebrated ALA’s Banned Books Week.
Maddie: Wow, so since 2005 or so. That leads perfectly to my next question, too. In your experience as a librarian at Cochise College, have you felt the impact of these nationwide challenges?
Karly: We haven’t; we’re fortunate that we haven’t had any challenges to our materials here at the college. And I don’t feel like there’s been any added pressure to restrict content to our collection. I think, a lot of times leading up to some of this, academic libraries felt a little safe because we operate with the understanding that our users are adults. They’re college students. However, some of the bills that are being proposed are concerning because they state that anybody who’s a minor is 18 and under, and we do have students who are 18 and under. So we’re having to pay closer attention to these bills that are being proposed and really advocate against those. They’re egregious anyway, but they would directly impact us. So, that safety net isn’t feeling so safe anymore. But, a couple of years ago, we watched very closely the Buena challenge. My boss is Dr. Jenn Wantz, the executive dean of community engagement, and we would work with her if there were a ban or a challenge. We have a process in place if someone complains about a book and how it goes through an evaluation process. But we haven’t had any bans or challenges. We’ve been very fortunate.
Maddie: We’re definitely very fortunate. But, as you said, it’s still concerning because we do have younger students here who would fall under these restrictions, and those restrictions could really put the libraries in a difficult position.
Maddie: Getting a little more into that, data shows that the majority of books that have been challenged are usually about issues of race, sex, gender, or sexuality—what would you say to people who are worried about the content of these books?
Karly: Samuel played an incredible video clip in his presentation where Author John Green remarks about his book Looking for Alaska being 2015’s Most Challenged Book. And he has a wonderful phrase where he says, “Text is meaningless without context.” And I think that perfectly encapsulates my feelings about the content of these books. It’s easy to cherry-pick suggestive or inappropriate passages, but it’s really important to evaluate the work as a whole, you know, not just some of its parts. It’s easy to say, “This is a very sad passage,” or, you know, a lot of the reasons for banning or challenging are grief, sexuality, or inappropriate behavior like drinking or drugs. But that’s where teens—where people—find things that they’re dealing with or going through. Books are what help us get to process some of our own emotions without having to talk to other people—if we’re worried about that or we don’t have access to them. And so I think just using those direct passages to ban a book entirely is really dangerous because then people don’t have access to the entire, you know, message of that book. Yeah, so it’s important to evaluate the work as a whole and not just some of its parts. He ends the clip with a poignant statement, “If you have a worldview that can be undone by a novel, let me submit that the problem is not with the novel.”
Maddie: Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. Because of all the controversy surrounding book censorship, many libraries have done what the American Library Association calls “soft censorship”–meaning, the books are placed in areas that are more or less hidden due to fear of challenges. What are your thoughts on that?
Karly: So, there’s another term we’ve talked about in our business and in some of those sessions that I’ve attended called “self–censoring,” where libraries are not purchasing materials for their collections that may seem offensive. So it’s kind of hand in hand—so, we’re either just not going to purchase those items, or we’ll have them, but we’re going to put them where they’re not easily found. I very much think that these are both a form of censorship still, and maybe even more dangerous. We, as librarians, have an obligation to provide access to information. And I think we need to make sure that access is equitable and attainable to all. Every library has a collection development policy or procedure, so maybe that book isn’t something your patrons would read, and that’s okay. But we just need to be very careful about walking that line and not self-censoring what we are getting in our collections.
Karly: And I know a lot of libraries do interlibrary loans, where we can request the material. Some libraries have used that as their “Well, we’re not going to purchase it” because it’s available through that. But you just have to wonder, are people hesitant to put in a book request for something like that? All of that to say, though, there is an increase in documented violence against library staff. And I think there needs to be better protections in place. We librarians, for the last couple of years, have been harassed, intimidated, threatened, removed from positions, name-called. At my session in May, there was a Library Director in Oregon who literally couldn’t even go to the grocery store in her own town because she was getting called a groomer, a pedophile…really terrible things. And she eventually had to leave—she had to leave the town. They ran her out of town in 2024. So, I think the natural defense is to hide a little bit. So, I certainly understand why libraries are self-censoring to a degree; these laws are really egregious.
Maddie: That’s awful…I almost can’t even imagine that.
Karly: We had a law in Arizona that would have a penalty of $5,000. It would be a felony offense, and there would be jail time. One even proposed that the person would have to register as a sex offender for the rest of their life if they were caught “giving inappropriate material to minors.” But the definition of inappropriate…it’s so wide-ranging. And there’s nothing actually in libraries that meets that definition of obscene or inappropriate. So these laws are unconstitutional, but they’re still getting passed anyway. So, yeah—I understand why libraries are doing these things, but I just want to see better protections for library staff so it doesn’t even have to come down to that.
Maddie: What do you want the community to know about the Cochise College Libraries, and what information is available to them?
Karly: One thing I love about libraries is that the people we check materials out to are extremely private. We do not share that information. Our systems don’t keep that information. Students have, sometimes frustratingly, come to us and said, “Hey, I checked out this book a couple of months ago. Can you tell me what that is?” We can’t. And we don’t want to—and the reason is for your privacy. We don’t even keep those records—it’s safe for us, it’s safe for you. So, no one can come to us and say, “We need to know what Maddie checked out six months ago.” We can’t provide that information and wouldn’t want to anyway. It’s almost like HIPAA laws, and we take them very seriously. And, as far as what information is available, everything we have is online. We have our policies and procedures. We follow our collection management procedures as a guide for what materials to purchase—a lot of the time, they go along with classes that we teach, but we teach a lot of classes. So, some of those items might seem controversial to some. We teach the sociology of human sexuality. We teach psychology classes, social science classes, and philosophy classes…so we have a wide breadth of information and materials. However, we use our collection procedures as our guide, and then we use the Library of Congress classification system for all of our materials. So, really, the only special location we have is our graphic novels, and that is so students can find them easily because they like to read them. Really, everything we have is out in the open.
Maddie: That’s great. And, as you said, there are interlibrary loans. So, if there is something specific that they’re looking for, it can be requested for them.
Karly: Right, and with that, if we get enough people requesting something, we will purchase the material ourselves. Faculty can make requests, even students, so we have our collection management policy, and we base it a lot on curriculum, but a lot of libraries are moving to what they call “patron-driven acquisitions.” So, we love to purchase books that we know are going to get checked out.
Maddie: Speaking of students, even though this may seem like a scary time for writers and authors, what advice or encouragement would you give to students who want to go on to become published authors?
Karly: I think it’s important that those stories are told. Again, that would be like a form of censorship to not publish your work just because you’re afraid of it being banned one day. Those stories deserve to have an audience, right? And I read a really great quote a couple of weeks ago that kind of changed my thought process a lot. We’ve always been told it’s important for other people to see themselves as the main character, but it’s important for other people to see diverse characters in those roles as well. Again, John Green has a great quote about it, “Books are both mirrors and windows.” We need them to be both. We need to see ourselves, but we also need to see others. It gives us our empathy. So, I hope someone would write that novel, write that autobiography, or fiction, or whatever it may be so that we would have access to that.
Maddie: Right, absolutely. That makes me wonder, outside of the persistence of authors and commitment of librarians, what does the future of Freedom to Read activism look like, in your opinion?
Karly: I think it’s students like Samuel saying, “Hey, I have a voice, I want to use it.” I can do all the advocacy I want in the world, but younger generations listen to their peers more than they listen to their adults, I think. So it’s going to take students speaking out and saying they’re not comfortable with altering what they have access to and that they’re going to fight against it.
Maddie: And then something I found kind of interesting. According to ALA’s 2024 preliminary data, 2024 had fewer reported cases of challenged books than 2023. Do you think the Freedom to Read initiative is stemming the tide?
Karly: I think it is. The ACLU has really gotten involved. The Office of Intellectual Freedom is counting a lot of these bills that are getting passed. The ALA has put really concerted efforts into advocacy. And I think it is helping to stem some of this. And I do think young people are getting more involved. You know, as the number of people turning 18 grows and increases, they use their voice to vote. I think that is kind of that transition that we’re seeing, which is good. We’re not out of the woods yet, but the fact that it’s a little lower is a bit of a relief.
Maddie: How can people get involved with or learn more about this movement?
Karly: They can reach out to me, for one. Or look up online—a lot of these organizations, ACLU, ALA, Freedom to Read, Office of Intellectual Freedom, they all have really great sides. On the ACLU page, even if you’re not a member of our Advocacy Committee, you can get involved. We have “one-click politics,” so you can join our AZLA Advocate list with your first or last name and email, and you’ll hear from us whenever there’s something—like a bill that we’re really concerned about—to contact your senator or representative for. So, there are a lot of advocacy lists that you can get on.
Karly: And, another thing, so we’re actually playing a film called Banned Together, which is a free screening. It’ll be happening on October 24th in Douglas, in the Little Theatre, Building 800. We’ll be showing it on October 30th in the Student Union Building on the Sierra Vista campus. And it’s a documentary about these high school students who—there had been, I think, 98 or 96 challenged materials removed from their library—and they fought to get those back. So they made this documentary about these students from North Carolina, kind of starting small—grassroots efforts—and working their way to speaking on the floor at the Captiol of why they wanted these items reinstated at their school. Another thing, Samuel’s trying to start a Banned Books Club and he’s looking for people to be officers. I’m going to be the advisor. So, if students are interested in getting involved, they can reach out to me.
Maddie: Yeah, I actually remember reading about that case—that’s really incredible. I’d be interested in seeing that screening. It’s a great way to not just get more familiarized with this issue of book censorship but also see the impact a student-led initiative can have.
Maddie: So, my last question for you is, is there anything else you would like students and community members to know either about Banned Books Week, book challenges, or the Cochise College libraries in general?
Karly: I think what’s really important is just to keep supporting your library. What we do is fundamental to our communities. We provide access to so many things—we’ve become these community spaces. We teach people how to use computers. Our library, the Sierra Vista Public Library, Copper Queen Public Library, and Douglas Public Library even get grants to provide hotspots so people can have access to the internet. We give out food. We have make-and-take kits for kids. I don’t want what libraries do to get lost in all of this negativity because there are so many people who would not have access to it. I mean, think about how many job resumes are online now. Or even—we don’t have any cooling shelters here, where do unhoused people go? A lot of the time, they go to libraries to get out of the heat and have access to restrooms and water. And I don’t want that to get overshadowed by all this negativity when what we do is really quintessential to our communities. And it’s not as if we’re doing anything “bad,” but it’s become so controversial, and I just don’t want it to overshadow everything else that libraries do.
In short, our libraries and librarians are in jeopardy. These book challenges do more than just remove materials from library collections and deny patrons their right to access that information; they encourage sweeping animosity—and, in some cases, violence—toward librarians. Our librarians do so much more for us than checking in and out books, but they can’t stem the tide of censorship alone. If you’re worried about these challenges and the potential for them to impact you and your community, we encourage you to get involved in whatever way you can.
Madeline Colley is a student content creator for the Marketing, Communications and Advancement office at Cochise College. Her major is English, and she will graduate in December 2024.
References
“American Library Association Reveals Preliminary Data on 2024 Book Challenges.” ALA, 1 Oct. 2024, www.ala.org/news/2024/09/american-library-association-reveals-preliminary-data-2024-book-challenges.
“Bannings and Burnings in History.” Freedom to Read, 4 July 2024, www.freedomtoread.ca/resources/bannings-and-burnings-in-history/.
“Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2023.” American Library Association, www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10. Accessed 10 Oct. 2024.
“Who We Are.” Freedom to Read, 13 July 2024, www.freedomtoread.ca/who-we-are/.