What do you make of this bulletin, from the Fall 2021 issue of the Bard College Stevenson Library newsletter?
In keeping with campus-wide initiatives to ensure that Bard is a place of inclusion, equity, and diversity, the Stevenson Library is conducting a diversity audit of the entire print collection in an effort to begin the process of decanonizing the stacks. Three students, who are funded through the Office of Inclusive Excellence, have begun the process which we expect will take at least a year to complete. The students will be evaluating each book for representations of race/ethnicity, gender, religion, and ability.
“Decanonizing” was a new one for us, but we know what they mean, just as we know what “evaluating each book for representations of race/ethnicity, gender, religion, and ability” signals. It means censorship via the oubliette, what museums call “deaccessioning,” the subjection of the library collection to the dictates of political correctness. Responding to a query, one librarian assured a curious questioner that the “decanonizing” imperative was only an “information-gathering project . . . an attempt to increase our understanding of our collection, not to remove books.” Want to bet?
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