The conversation among librarians in school districts, colleagues at public libraries and classroom teachers is ongoing and difficult: What do we do with the books written by authors accused of sexual harassment or, in Bill Cosby’s case, authors convicted of sexual assault? “I truly do believe you have to be able to separate the artist from the work,” says Ann Morgester, library supervisor for the Anchorage (AK) School District. “You look at Sherman Alexie’s work. Does his work stand alone aside from him? Does it speak to the reader?”

Sherman Alexie

Alexie, author of the acclaimed The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, was one of many accused of sexual harassment when the #MeToo movement hit children’s publishing earlier this year ("Children’s Publishing Reckons with Sexual Harassment in Its Ranks"). Other big names accused included Jay Asher, who wrote Thirteen Reasons Why, and James Dashner, author of “The Maze Runner” series. Morgester discussed it with district staff. The high school librarians didn’t hesitate—the books stay. The middle school staff thought maybe it wasn’t worth any possible problems or complaints from parents. Most of these books are for older students anyway, why not just take them off the shelves? In the end, though, the titles stayed. Across the country, in Massachusetts, Scott McGinley made the same decision.

Weighing Professional Ethics

“I’m strongly opposed to removing books because of who the author is, regardless of what they’ve done,” says McGinley, librarian at two middle schools in the Longmeadow (MA) Public School District. “It really would be against our professional ethics to judge the author and not the work, so that is a concern of mine.  … “Little Bill” was on the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom’s (OIF) list of the Top 10 most-challenged books of 2016.” OIF issues an annual list of the 10 most-challenged books from the preceding year. The collection of titles becomes a call to arms for librarians in the fight against censorship. This year, though, the list revealed two authors at the top that caused some ambivalence. Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why was No. 1 and Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was No. 2. Go back a year and the 2016 most-challenged list included the “Little Bill” series, written by Cosby. So now what? Stand up against censorship or remove the books based on the actions of the authors? “I think we still need to champion those books based on the fact that they speak for and to our students, they engage our students and they represent a really important voice,” says Morgester.  “If I went to my collection at my previous high school and removed every book whose author offended me in some way, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of things in there.” These cases can be especially difficult, though, even for those who unequivocally believe the books should remain on the shelves. “It’s hard for me because on the one hand, I know so many people who have experienced harassment and assault and traumatic events in their lives, and I understand the far-reaching consequences of that,” she says. “But on the other hand, those books have a really important place in engaging our students.” In Cosby’s case there are other factors. Those considering removing his books must decide whether they have enough materials with African American characters, who are just typical kids doing everyday things as opposed to the historical figures who make up much of the diverse titles in school libraries. For most, though, Cosby’s books were already weeded based on general criteria: Are they outdated? Do they circulate? “I only had one “Little Bill” book and one biography on Bill Cosby,” says Catherine Mottola, librarian at Forest Lake Elementary School in Wantagh, NY. “I weeded both of them, but even if he had not been convicted, both books were older and not circulating, so it was time for them to go.” With biographies, memoirs, autobiographies, things can get even more complicated. “I would definitely pull any biographies, because the biography would need to be updated to reflect the actual life experience of that person,” says Morgester. “When you’re talking about memoirs, I think that’s a little bit trickier. It is perceptual. It seems to be that in many cases, as offensive as this may sound, these individuals don’t necessarily perceive their actions as inappropriate, so would they include them as an issue within a memoir anyway? “When you’re talking about books that are autobiographical—that’s a really kind of interesting question. Would I say Diary of a Part-Time Indian is autobiographical? Does it still speak clearly to his experience as a Native American individual growing up in his circumstance? I don’t know that I can answer that without a lot more thought.”

Calling Out MelVil Dewey

Those who know their library history see an irony in suggesting weeding books based on the behavior, or alleged behavior, of the man responsible for the work. To oust anything connected to someone accused of sexual harassment would mean ditching not only the Dewey Decimal Classification but the modern library as we know it. Melvil Dewey—the “Father of Modern Librarianship,” creator of the Dewey Decimal Classification, and the co-founder of the American Library Association (ALA) and SLJ’s sister publication Library Journal—was banned from the ALA in the early 1900s because his sexual conduct toward female colleagues on an ALA cruise was so bad many women were moved to report him. Much like the #MeToo stories of today, his actions were already well-known within his circles, but women feared the repercussions of reporting it. The cruise trip was so bad they were moved to say something at a time when reporting a powerful man for sexual harassment was much more difficult than it is today. In 2018, a vital part of #MeToo is accountability. Asher denies the accusations but was dropped by his agent and banned by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Alexie apologized for some behavior, denied other accusations, but was stripped of an award and his publisher has delayed the paperback edition of his memoir You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me.  Dashner apologized for not understanding or honoring the “boundaries of power dynamics” and said he’ll seek counseling but lost his agent. While agents, publishers, and bookstores can distance themselves, librarians can’t make decisions the same way. Some librarians are finding a way to stick to their professional ethics but not completely betraying their personal belief systems either. Colleagues at the Bergen County (NJ) Cooperative Library System discussed the issue and agreed to leave the books on the shelves, but some are still taking some kind of action. Stacey Shapiro, young adult/emerging technologies librarian at Tenafly (NJ) Public Library, took The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian off her recommended reading list. “I don't feel right recommending [his] books after the allegations came out,” she wrote in an email. “I would much rather recommend a book by a woman, and if I could, a book by an Indigenous woman, instead of someone who abused their power like that.” If the book stops circulating for a few years, she says she’d be “open to weeding it.” She knows that won’t be the case with others. “I can't with James Dashner's books,” she wrote. “They still go out constantly.” In Allendale, NJ, another BCCLS library, Alessandra Nicodemo will not put the books written by any of the accused on display and will only buy the minimum copies needed to meet her patrons’ demands. She, too, will take them off the shelves only if the books meet her general weeding requirements. “I feel this is the best balance between my responsibility to give my patrons the materials they want, and my desire to hold these men accountable for their actions and stop rewarding them financially,” she wrote in an email. This isn’t the first time Nicodemo has had to make a decision about an author whose behavior crosses a line for her. “I personally feel that Orson Scott Card's support (both financially and vocally) of anti-LGBTQ+ organizations is reprehensible, and I have no intention of reading any of his books,” she wrote. “That being said, I have kept his books on my shelves (except for an Ender's Game sequel that recently came up on my weeding list), because I do not feel it is ethical for me, as an information professional, to make those kinds of choices for anyone other than myself.” These decisions and the conversations surrounding them will continue as librarians weigh their responsibility to students and patrons and put aside their personal feelings to follow their career guidelines. “We as professionals have to be somewhat dispassionate about our choices when it comes to collection development,” says McGinley. “We have to be a little cold sometimes to our own feelings when it comes to making decisions for the populations we serve, that’s why I felt like the ‘Little Bill’ series should be defended even though that man’s actions certainly can’t.”