Head Tale

This was the display at my library in February 2020.

This has been an unprecedented twelve months that has impacted all sectors including public libraries.

Libraries have had to pivot in a variety of ways – from implementing curbside pickup to quarantining books to opening up to the idea of staff working from home – and there are numerous articles about the impacts of Covid on public libraries.

In terms of Freedom of Expression as a core library value, there’s been a lot less analysis what have some of the impacts may have been.

Maybe that’s partly because the issues that we usually associate with Freedom of Expression – censorship, hate speech, obscenity, offensiveness, collection policies – haven’t really been impacted much by Covid, at least in public libraries.

But at least in one important way, I think there should be some reflection and possibly even some changes going forward.

Public libraries have always tried to find a balance between providing accurate, dependable information and also information that may be less reliable or more controversial but which has an audience within the community.

But in an age where many people believe that Covid is a hoax and/or that it is manmade and/or that Bill Gates is using mass vaccination to implant us all with microchips, is this balance out of whack and maybe we should be more proactive in trying to provide good information?

Or maybe not?

I mean, if there’s a patron that believes sticking crystals up their ass will help prevent Covid and as a highly-trained librarian, I’m pretty sure that’s not really accurate or based in science, should we stop collecting books on crystals just because they might promote false beliefs?

I don’t think so but I also think there’s also other opportunities to provide *good* information along with the Gwyneth Paltrow-inspired pseudo-science through our displays, programs, handouts, posters and more.

(Uhm, the picture of the display at the top of my this post isn’t a perfect example of this as we tried to *mostly* include useful, reliable books in the earliest days of Covid but also a few that were less based in pure science – although, to be fair, in the early days of Covid, not a lot was known at all about most aspects of the disease and who knows, maybe crystal enemas *were* part of the solution?!?) 🙂