It sounds like they really really work to avoid censorship. I think they handle it really well. There are a lot of people who are offended if things aren't just the way they expect, and want public systems to conform to *their* particular feelings.

Some commentors on the story cried Censorship on this book, but I really don't think it is. It sounds like they are very responsible.

And at the very least... they are not burning the books...

It's a fine line to walk. I'd rather the books be put under lock and key than removed entirely, but I have to wonder...how does one even know to ask? Sure, if you know the book before hand you can ask when you fail to locate it on the shelves, but there's no chance of finding it just by browsing a specific section.

I don't understand why people think hiding an idea away makes it go away. Denying it exists, banning it from public, etc...Prohibition fails.

As a librarian, I'll say that books are fairly easy because most people are fairly reasonable.

At my library we have a policy of purchasing DVDs at a library patron's request. We don't purchase X-rated titles, but there are some pretty wild R-rated titles out there. So the trustees decided, in a few instances, that we might purchase a wild title, but we don't need to put it out where it will offend our other patrons. -It is available upon request.

So NOW . . . I have a really creepy guy who likes to engage certain female librarians in explicit debates about the scenes in certain movies that are on the Open shelves, as opposed to the objectionable scenes in movies that are only available upon request. I guess his fetish is making people uncomfortable.
They send him to me, because I have the seniority to tell people to F*** Off! when I feel like it. lol

I think it's good that they at least don't destroy or put the book away for ever, but I'm not sure this is right either.

The book that starts off the whole article is a comic, written by a Belgian almost EIGHTY years ago. It's a historic book. Yes it's a story and not a true tail, but to someone who liked literature and thinks further than the pretty pictures, it's an account of the human mind and how people were in that time.

Belgians were also colonists, and Congo was a Belgian colony for a long time. So that book was simply a story based on what Herge thought about Congo. It should be in the open, so people can find it also if they don't 'look' for it. To say it needs to be in the kids section is a different point, but then again Tintin was never that much a kid's comic, it's more for older kids who already have their morales established (or ruined) by the time they'd read it.