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Self-Appointed Censor at Tennessee Library

October 27, 2009 - 9:03am — birdie

According to the Daily Herald, someone has been crossing out dirty words in books, and employees at the Maury County (TN) Library aren’t happy about it.

“It bothers me because nobody is holding a gun to their head making them read these books,” said Elizabeth Potts, director of the county library. “If they don’t like them, they should just return them.”
Library Director Elizabeth Potts shows one of several books which have had “dirty” words marked through. Others have editorial comments added.

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October 27, 2009 - 11:00am — Anonymous

I've seen that too

The same thing happened at a library where I worked in North Dakota. Books came back to us with words blacked out with an ink pen or marker or they had white-out over them. Asside from the obvious, another great inconvenience was that we had a collection of books through a lease program. The marks left on those materials forced us to absorb them into our permanent collection.. It is unfortunate that people do not realize the true damage of their actions.

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October 27, 2009 - 12:25pm — Anonymous

Also in Syracuse

When I was working on my degree at S.U. I saw that in a public library where I worked. The book in question was a collection of short fiction stories. A patron had first crossed out statements with which they did not agree, and then had proceeded to expound upon their own opinions, in pen, in margins and paragraph breaks. Voluminously.
In that same library, someone also routinely hid all the books about adolescent sexuality beneath chairs. Not only did the mystery patron's actions greatly improve in-house circulation statistics for the materials in question, but caused those materials to be replaced and updated many times apiece.

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October 27, 2009 - 1:50pm — Anonymous

Editorial comments...

Saw it in Hillary Clinton's autobio here at our library, something very ultra-right declaring Hillary to be a socialist. Typical. One person feels such high & might self righteousness that they believe they are the saviors of society, when in fact, they're contributing to a totalitarian belief.

However, if I ever catch anyone vandalizing a book from our collection (yes, it's wishful thinking at best) then OFF WITH THERE HEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAADSSSSSS!!!

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October 27, 2009 - 1:54pm — Anonymous

WHOOOPS...

I of course meant "their heads" - what kinda librarian am I when I can't show proper grammar??

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