Interview
Kelly Brown – Librarian at Nash Library
Robert BlueBack and Max Corbin
0:00
Max – Do you know of any kinds of book challenges in this district or…?
Kelly – I can only speak to challenges to books here at Nash and we haven’t had any since I’ve been here which has been since 2002. I don’t know about Chickasha Public Library. I believe there have been some challenges in Edmond to Romeo and Juliet this was probably a few years ago and that’s because of the suicide and then, I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head. That’s doesn’t mean it-they weren’t there. Or, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t other challenges I just can’t think of them right now.
Max – What are kind of your thoughts and opinions on book censorship?
Kelly – I don’t think it should occur. That really is the stance of the American Library Association as well, obviously and they are the main – what am I going to say – I guess the main advocate against censorship and banning book and they – you know, they are the ones that do banned books week they do some other things and so if you go to their website you can – there’ll actually be a list of challenges they keep track of
Challenges around the country. But even if it weren’t for ALA and even if I wasn’t a librarian I would still be against it I think people should be able to read what they want and be able to form their own ideas based on them.
Max – Are you also the archivist for this school?
Kelly – I am. And there’s an element of – in every – you can’t… Like, I just finished buying nearly one hundred book for the library which means I selected the ones I thought were appropriate for this library. So there is an element of bias when I purchase books for the library, and a lot of people “well, why didn’t you buy that?” And this honestly came up when I was buying this because I bought something about non-believers or atheists and then I bought another one about white Christianity and I bought – and I though “Okay, do I have a balance between sort of the religious viewpoints here in these books that I bought” because you are very attuned to the fact that you are selecting books and that you have your own biases and everything so you kind of have to overcome those as a librarian. And I was thinking about sending out the lists of these books that I bought but I’m like “No, because somebody’s going to complain about one of them”. You know, I’ll just let them get here, let them come and see them and everything. A lot of people might – I bought one on Islamophobia and I thought well, see what happens with that. Usually people don’t say anything. I mean I’ve never had anybody challenge anything like that. There is an element of bias in selection of books. I try to keep my biases to just those programs that we support here, but with USAO it’s difficult because we’re so interdisciplinary and we encourage thinking outside the box of the curriculum or whatever that you guys come up with stuff that you know I haven’t that we don’t have a program for but we still should have a book because somebody … just because we don’t support that program somebody’s still going to be curious about it, want to do research in it. There is an element of bias.
4:37
There is also an element of bias in archives and what you choose to keep and not keep. Not long ago, actually several years ago, there was a professor here who died and he’d been here a long time and I was going through his papers to see what we wanted to keep and what we didn’t want to keep and there were several things in there about his homosexuality and there was a letter from the 70’s telling him to – hat he was in dep trouble because of this and everything. Of course, I’m going to keep it, but there would be a lot of people who would think “he was really private about that and therefore should you keep it and essentially out him after he’s dead”, so there are some issues like that in terms of – but I think it would have been wrong to sort of censor it from what we kept about him. Not sure if that’s what you’re looking for or not.
Max – So we would contact you to schedule to come and look through the archives if we –
Kelly – What are you looking for in the archives?
Max – We’re not sure. If we wanted to see if there was anything that would kind of help us
Kelly – Sure. Definitely. Or Nicole. Nicole down at the other office if I’m not here, Nikole can help, too. Nicole is actually a grad student at OU in librarian archive in that program there. In the library, if you notice in the stacks there are sometimes books with orange stickers covering the call number? That means that book’s been challenged or banned, not by us, but somewhere in the United States. We identify them because we want to encourage people to read banned books. You know, we used to do Banned Books Week, but we lost that and haven’t been able to keep up with that. What all are you guys doing in the class?
Max – We have to research a local instance of a book being challenged or banned and then relate it to any national challenges we can find about that book.
Kelly – And by local can it be Oklahoma?
Max – yes.
Kelly – You might be able to – we have access to the Daily – the Oklahoman, used to be called the Daily Oklahoman it’s just the Oklahoman now, from 19-whenever it started to the present so you can go search there and you could just search for “challenged book” or whatever that might give you an idea of what goes on here in Oklahoma. I would also check the ALA Banned Books Website it’s ala.org and just drill down from there. And then, Oklahoma Library Association might have something I don’t know. So might the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. Both of those are, Oklahoma Department of Libraries would be, I actually don’t know that they would be better than the other one or not. The website is far more developed than Oklahoma Library Association, but they might not address that content. I believe there’s been some. There was a challenge to is it Ten Drum by I can’t think of the name. I would start at the ALA Website and see if you could find one in Oklahoma and if you can’t find one in Oklahoma go to the Daily Oklahoman or the Oklahoman Archives. Which you can get to through the library’s website if you have any problems let me know. I think that’s probably – those are good places to start I think. Oklahoma City Metropolitan Library might have some stuff too – Gunter Grass is the guy who wrote Ten Drum I believe. That’s right. I believe it has been challenged in Oklahoma City maybe within the last 20, 25 years. So they might have something as well. If you can get an interview with one of the librarian in Oklahoma City you might have somebody there who’s been there a while who can tell you look for the old people who’ve been around for a while.
10:00
Max – I think that’s pretty much all the questions I have. Is there anything that you wanna add about being a librarian, things on book censorship?
Kelly – We do have several books upstairs on – that’s a good point. Up in the Z’s on the top floor you’ll find some – I think it’s called books that have been challenged or challenged books let’s see. That might give you a good start to just find those books. See if I can give you a better call number. [typing] Should be in the Z-1019 area. This is called Hit List – Frequently Challenged Book for Young Adults. And let me see try banning books. 658. I would try both of these areas upstairs they’ll be close together. They’ll be on this end of the very top floor and there’ll be lists of books there. I think the only – let’s see – I think James Joyce’s Ulysses couldn’t be – if you’re familiar with that work – couldn’t be published in the united states for many years. It’s sort an interesting story if you want to read about it and it had to be published by Sylvia Beach who would live in Paris and they sort of clandestinely got published because it was so very very different. They wouldn’t allow it in the United States they weren’t allowed to ship it to the united states for a very long time. You should look it up. It’s an interesting – that’s one of the – you know a lot of these are challenges. Banning and challenging obviously aren’t the same thing and so the ban on Ulysses coming into the United States is sort of important. That’s the story around that. I don’t know of any other books right of the top of my head that face that. That was in the 20s, 30s some time around then I can’t remember the exact publication date of Ulysses but it’s a very interesting story.
13:16
Max – Random instance that popped into my head – What is your opinion on – Would it be considered censorship that the last chapter of Clockwork Orange was excluded from the American edition for quite a while?
Kelly – I would think so. I think definitely. Was it published in England first and then -? Okay. Who published it in the United States?
Max – I don’t recall.
Kelly – Okay. Yeah, to me it’s censorship. Is that Penguin? I don’t think it’s Penguin, I was trying to think of who had – let me look it up.
Max – Just something random that I remember. I heard at one point they took out the last chapter because they didn’t want to main character to have the sudden revelation and grow up.
Kelly – As America – “They deemed it to be sell-out, bland and very very British” is what the quote is here. Now, that’s a different story almost in that – I thought it was going to be banned for sort of the controversial theme of the book, but they’re saying that it was not a – they’re using as an almost it won’t play to an American audience because of this last chapter. So that’s almost a marketing decision rather than a banning. At least that’s the official story. That’s interesting. That is a really good question. I’m not familiar with the – to me it seems marketing more than censorship. It’s more tame censorship rather than censorship because you don’t like the language or something that’s being said in the book or the message you know like a suicide or something but it still seems kind of wrong. It says here that they started adding it back in in 1986. Wonder if it – wonder if the sales were any different from pre-chapter 21 and post-chapter 21. Interesting.
Max – Do you have any questions?
Robert – No, I’m sorry.
Max – Do you have any questions for us?
Kelly – What is – Tell me about the class. What are you all doing in there?
Max – we are reading through things like what censorship is what books have been challenged kind of on the United States level we have to do some sort of project where we talk about whatever book we pick.
Kelly – Okay. What’d you guys pick?
Robert – We initially picked LOTR because we heard that it got banned in some schools because of – it was essentially satanic writing. Sow we thought we could track one of these cases down to Oklahoma but apparently there wasn’t any. We’re kind of looking for a new book to write over.
Kelly – So you’re both reading that book? You have to read the same book?
Robert – Yeah, we’re paired as a group.
Kelly – Oh, okay. If you have any problems locating something in Oklahoma, let me know. But I think you’ll find some – I think you’ll do okay on the ALA website finding that. Sounds like an interesting class. Good luck. Do you like the format – videoing and things?
Max – it’s different.
Kelly – is it? Different than an in-class? Do you like one over the other?
Max – It’s pretty even. Thankfully the – when the connection between computers is good it runs almost like a normal class here. I was almost kind of surprised we have a team-taught class.
Kelly – All of those classes are team-taught the ones done by COPLAC. Do you like being able to interact with students from other institutions?
Max – I think we would enjoy it more if maybe we would all talk a little more? It’s kind of like “hi, I’m here”.
Kelly – Well, take the lead on that. Talk more because once one starts talking a lot of people fall in and start. It always makes a better class for the instructor when everybody speaks up so, your instructors would probably appreciate it. Don’t be shy. I’m glad you guys stopped by. Let me know if I can help more. Fun topic.
Max – Thank you, thank you.