The interview.

Morning came and so with it our interview. I was a little nervous because I have never interviewed anyone academically. I have conducting interviews on both sides of a job table, but I have never interviewed someone about their personal beliefs.

We arrived at the library and I was surprised by the amount of people waiting to go into it right when it opened. Amy Ford was easy to find, and she had a group study room we could go into. She was well spoken and excited about the project we were doing. The interview went without any obvious or embarrassing hiccups, but it was still a learning experience.

We realized that the angle of our shot was not the greatest for interviews. The focus was entirely on her, creating a phantom voice for our interviewer. We were restricted by the room size and light source. If we had scoped out the site ahead of time we may have found a way to make the room work or have requested that we do the interview somewhere else.

We also discovered that we should have tried to create hypothetical follow up questions. As she replied to some of our initial questions we created new questions on the fly and they may have came off less professional. Although there is no way to anticipate all possible responses a flow chart of possible questions would help with preparation.

Amy Ford surprised us with a lot of her some of her responses. She liked that books have been attempted to be banned and that people care enough about books to even begin discussions about it. The library frequently hosts forums to discuss challenging issues in a safe environment. While Amy was not directly familiar with the Song of Solomon case and how it was handled in St. Mary’s County, she was a good representative for the American Library Association. Her general stance on censorship is that all content regardless of validity and morality should be represented but I am not sure I agree.

Censorship of inflammatory hate speech with the goal of inciting violence or prejudice against a specific group of people should either contain a disclaimer are altogether not be represented in literature. I have also heard of a book about how to murder someone. The books publisher was sued in a civil suite and it was determined that the book could be considered aiding and abetting because it was a step by step guide. The book was found at a murder scene and the steps within the book were followed.