Do you think it would be wrong to "white-out" 3 cuss words in a Christian book? This book and a couple of others are by a popular Christian publishing company. The entire book has a great message. Why was the publisher able to give us 270 pages of words without cussing and felt the need to include those 3 words? (I am going to write to the publisher and ask them the same question.)
Reading the story, I am sure there are more cusses that could have been included but weren't. We have readers who will be very offended to see those words in print - - - so I want to hide them. Also, when we read offensive words, they stick in our mind and I would prefer not to see them, too.
Replies
May I please have the source on your comment: "It is against copyright law to bleep out words or anything from a video or DVD. I've been told that the same is true for removing words from books" ?
That's probably true for when you're reproducing or citing the work, but I'm sure we're still free to do what we want with our own copies. As far as the movies go, there is a well-publicized DVD player that will censor the movies for family viewing.
That being said, the author's words or illustrator's pictures are theirs, and we need to think very seriously before (permanently) censoring their work within library materials. Perhaps better not to have the book at all than to censor part of it.
Thank you for being a caring and dilligant church librarian. We need to be in the world, but not of the world.
Rita Kirkland
I had a somewhat similar question and had not previously thought of that alternative. My library did not have a selection policy when it was started, and lots of people donated books they were just trying to get rid of. I have found books published by The Watchtower Society and other religious organizations, among other questionable works. We were debating whether to throw them away, offer them as free, keep them, etc. I think I may consider a computer generated disclaimer for those works we keep but still consider borderline and any other possibly offensive items.
In the case of obviously "cult" (etc.) materials which some libraries might want to have available for authentic research rather than general faith or doctrinal study, I would definitely consider labeling them with a disclaimer (or perhaps stored in a section behind the librarian's desk, or some other area that they would need to be requested) since you may have not-yet Christians or new Christians visiting your library who do not have the discernment levels of more mature believers. By seeing these items on your regular shelves, they might conclude that they are acceptable. More mature believers might question having them in the collection. In your catalog you could certainly distinquish them in some way, as well as an alert at checkout. If you keep them on the regular shelves, you might want to have a small placard or a special shelf label indicating that the materials are not for use or reference as "Christian" materials. We have a very small library space-wise, so we generally stock only texts that explain/compare the doctrines from either a general text or a text from a Christian publisher, and may provide assistance on witnessing to those groups. I wouldn't make them (cult materials) available as freebies to the general congregation - some people pick up anything and presume it's church-approved. You never know who will be influenced (children?) by them, especially if they have pictures and easy-to-read format (like the Watchtower materials).
Many of us have such a reverence for books that we have a hard time disposing of any of them. We need to get past that. Unless you are an archival library for research or the Library of Congress, you don't need to feel obligated to keep old "junk" - if it's obsolete or 2nd rate, it's okay to just trash it. If it helps, think about your refrigerator - you'd get rid of a sealed gallon of milk 6 months past the date even if it looked fine before you opened it. You wouldn't pass it on to a neighbor, would you? Garbage is garbage.
For those of you reading this, do you have staff tasked with reading all/most things that you offer to ensure the information is Biblically accurate and doctrinally sound?
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