“Collection development” or “censoring”

I’m looking through a pile of donated children’s books to decide if we want to add any to our collection. When people donate materials, most of the time we put them in the book sale. We have a solid budget, and not a lot of space, so we’re usually not hurting for more.

Sometimes, though, I get a book that makes me really ponder what we have in the collection, and what we don’t have in the collection.

Today’s example is a book called “Kidatlas: Important Places in the Bible“. I’ve been flipping through it, deciding if I want to add it to our kid’s nonfiction section. I checked the catalog, and no one has it in the system, which means it would then become accessible for other libraries (we have reciprocal agreements with the libraries in our system, like interlibrary loan but faster and cheaper).

kidatlas

It does that nonfiction-trying-to-be-fun thing where there are jokes like “What kind of party did Judah want to give Pharaoh Shishak? A going-away party!” which I think is hilarious. (And the tactic worked, because I then read about who Pharaoh Shishak was.)

I was mostly inspired to write this post because I wanted to share the joke. Now I’m pondering collection development and providing access to materials. I can’t decide if I want to add this book, or where to put it. It provides a well-written historic tour of biblical places, but it does say that the universe was created by God in six days. Historical tour = not disputed. Creationism = currently disputed. I’m not saying that I don’t want to add books that are creationist. The question is, does this book belong with the religion books, or with the geography books. It’s 90% geography, but 10% specific Christian beliefs. Even my personal perspective that creationism belongs with religion and not science is a biased view – I’m sure others would choose differently.

Now I’m going to go order some left-wing zines for the teen section. Fiction is so much easier.

  1. Definitely. I wonder if the Atlas of Middle Earth is in with the writings or geography. Two libraries in our system have the Middle Earth atlas, and they both categorize it as being part of literature, not geography.

    I worry that books get ‘buried’ by being placed in an ill-fitting location. I suppose if you’re browsing for Christian books, you’d find it, but if you were a geography buff, you wouldn’t. Then again, a book can only be in one place, and that’s what the online catalog is for!

  2. Tonight’s plan involves making muffins and watching Shortbus. I swear.

    I’m so happy that HeartattaCk is digitally archived. Nothing says punk like .pdfs.

  3. Hmm…thaat’s an interesting problem. I’m leaning towards putting it with other literature books, like the above commenter said, it’s similar to an Atlas of Middle Earth. That’s a good point! On Amazon, they categorize the book “Walking the Bible” under both “biblical and christian literature” and “biblical history”. It’s similar to this atlas, and the author is searching a bit for his own spirituality, but I don’t think he ever says definitely that God created the earth or anything like that. When something makes that kind of statement it pigeon-holes itself pretty quick, huh? Looks like a neat book, though. =)

  4. I looked in WorldCat. It only lists a couple dozen public libraries that have this book (though there were a couple that had several copies). Only the Queens Borough Public Library housed it in the geo section. All the others had it in religion. 220.91 to be specific. One place had it located in the ‘kids reference’ section, but still had the call number in the 220’s. This is a tough call. Good luck!!!

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