1950s AD - Decade

Still, with foundation funds, the IFC conducted its third institute in 1955, focusing on selection policies of school and small public libraries. It was in these libraries-frequently managed by librarians without a professional education and operating without book selection policies-that the Library Bill of Rights presented a most challenging conflict of interest between individual security and the profession's allegiance to intellectual freedom. The unanimous adoption by the ALA Council of the "School Library Bill of Rights" in 1955 did, however, signal progress ("1955 Conference," 1955).

But signals of progress in librarians' support of the Library Bill of Rights were few and far between in the remaining years of the decade. Perhaps tired of its front-line stance, perhaps resting on its laurels, or perhaps retreating into ambivalence (Harris, 1976, p. 284), ALA shifted its focus away from intellectual freedom and toward internal bureaucratic matters like the ALA management survey. Headline-grabbing stories involving intellectual freedom issues diminished, and those that appeared seemed less interesting to ALA. With McCarthy's death in 1957, the Cold War settled into a pattern, although tensions escalated periodically when foreign events threatened. Librarians paid more attention to the educational reform movement launched by Sputnik than they did to the bubbling Civil Rights movement. Allied with education, they hoped to garner support and credibility. Their journals contained little about the landmark Supreme Court cases changing the legal limits of obscenity. Librarians would, however, have noticed a shift in tenor: the "obscene" was overtaking the "subversive" as the target of censorship.

The IFC also shifted in tenor. With Robert Downs as chair, it undertook the Liberty and Justice Book Awards that were financed by the Fund for the Republic. In 1957 and 1958, the IFC managed the project to give cash awards to the author and publisher of the book that made the most "distinguished contributions to the American tradition of liberty and justice" in each of three categories: contemporary problems and affairs, biography and history, and imaginative literature (Dunlap, 1956; "ALA Liberty and Justice Book Awards," 1956, p. 693). The IFC seemed suddenly unaware of either challenges to materials or the problems of socialization into the librarians' credo of freedom. The 1953 Freedom to Read statement appeared to have taken care of everything.

A study conducted in California and published in 1959 after many delays revealed how wrong that assumption was. Marjorie Fiske's Book Selection and Censorship: A Study of School and Public Libraries in California was jointly sponsored by the California Library Association and the University of California-Berkeley Library School. Both wanted to know if fear of censorship was causing librarians to modify their book selection practices--i.e., to practice self-censorship. The study's results were discouraging. Fiske concluded that, in spite of expressing "unequivocal freedom-to-read convictions," a majority of librarians reported deciding not to buy a particular book because of its controversiality, and nearly one-fifth habitually avoided buying any controversial material (Fiske, 1959, pp. 6465). While professionally educated librarians were more likely to uphold intellectual freedom principles, most librarians did not believe they were adequately prepared to deal with selection and censorship issues. Furthermore, librarians who were active in professional associations were more likely to rationalize their compromising principles in the process of book selection (pp. 67, 68). Fiske also found little faith among California librarians that the profession would back them if they needed it, even though they felt better when library leaders took "a strong and open stand on controversial issues" (p. 105). The Fiske Report was not welcome news. "What can we have to say to ourselves?" Library Journal responded. "What can we say to those we've tried to tell about the 'Fortress of Liberty'?" ("Censorship," 1959, p. 50).