AH, Finally, A Study That Proves It

librarian holding a trophy inscribed with the word success

I have talked quite a bit on here about how it’s possible that library collections are not balanced, politically. This, in my opinion, is usually more a publishing reality than it is a conscious effort to stamp out conservative ideologies. Frankly, the books about gender-non-conforming children are better than the ones about why those books are bad.

But now, thanks to something called Cato Institute, we can prove it’s true, conservative books really are underrepresented! There’s even a study!

Kind of!

The Basic Premise Here

The Cato Institute’s study asked three questions:

1. Can members of the public see which books are in school libraries?

2. Do school libraries have books that are potentially controversial?

3. Do school libraries balance perspectives?

Which I think are 2/3 fair.

The first, sure, members of the public should be able to see what’s in school libraries. They pay for them books.

The second is a little light on scientificosity, a word I just made up because I can do that, I write the newsletter. “Potentially controversial” seems like a broad category, but we’ll circle back.

The last is the big one, so we’ll spend the most time on it, as Cato Institute did. I take a lot of my direction from them. They seem very legitimate. wink. WINK.

Can Members of the Public See Which Books Are In School Libraries?

So these fuckups kind of fucked this one up right away. They looked at about 400 schools, and their finding was that 85% of them had some sort of “discovery layer” as we call it in the biz, that could be accessed online.

Now, that number would’ve been higher, but they counted schools with broken catalogs as being inaccessible. Which is fair in one sense, but I think the spirit of the study here is to find out whether school libraries are being shady about which books they have on the shelves, not which school libraries are so woefully underfunded that they can’t even manage a catalog (or, also very likely, have one underpaid employee who’s 19 and has zero experience and may manage the catalog via spreadsheet, or equally likely, have one underpaid employee who is a burned-out teacher finishing their downhill slope to retirement, also having zero library catalog experience or know-how).

Here’s where it gets kinda bullshitty:

It was sometimes difficult to discover how to search libraries, including finding access on district websites and determining if searches could be done through those websites or only by going directly to Destiny Discover.

Cato, my guys, I don’t think this is the gotcha you think it is. Bad web design and a library catalog buried on a school district website are almost certainly not a result of trying to hide content, but rather a series of bad decisions made over several decades, probably by school boards and other political authorities whose only UX contribution is that it’d be “neat” to add a little weather widget to their school district’s front page.

So far, I would say the schools are doing their job. 85% is pretty good, certainly not demonstrating an epidemic of obfuscation, and that number would probably be even higher if school districts had the funding and support to do what they wanted to do.

“Obfuscation.” You keep reading this newsletter, you’re going to be SO smart!

Do School Libraries Have Books That Are Potentially Controversial?

The good news here is that Cato is actually IN FAVOR of libraries having controversial books, at least in terms of what they’re saying online:

The…question matters because society needs to tackle contentious issues, and omitting controversial topics can inhibit students from undertaking the free inquiry that helps prepare them to do that.

Huh, okay. I’m game.

Their methods I’m not so sure of.

Approximately 51 percent of schools with access to searchable libraries did not include any of the books on our list.

*GASP*

Okay, wait a minute. There’s more words and stuff here:

This is seemingly at odds with the findings of Columbia University professor Kirsten Slungaard Mumma. In searching for books dealing with potentially controversial topics in thousands of public school libraries, she found that 78 percent of elementary/​middle schools held at least 1 of 49 books dealing with LGBTQ+ topics, and about 97 percent of high schools held at least 1 of 100 books on that topic.

Hmm, well, who’s right?

Of course, Mumma’s pool of books was much larger than ours and included fiction, greatly increasing the likelihood of finding a title.

Ah, I see. So “controversial” only included non-fiction in Cato’s eyes, and there was more data in Mumma’s study. How many more?

Cato: 400

Mumma: 6,631

Mumma’s study included 17 times as many libraries, which does seem like a pretty significant difference.

In addition, I think it’s probably wrong to exclude fiction from a “controversial” books list. There is a ton of fiction, especially teen-centric fiction, that tackles stuff like gender, sexuality, and race, and I think these books end up doing a better job handling these topics most times than their non-fiction equivalents.

However, good on Cato for admitting outright that their study is probably less reliable than another, and while this does seem to make their methods a little shaky, they don’t necessarily seem interested in removing controversial books from libraries, so let’s move on to the big swinging hot dog here.

Do School Libraries Balance Perspectives?

…among all libraries where any of the books for which we searched were found, there was a heavily pronounced liberal lean.

Oh, no! Busted!

Kinda!

But, okay, there are some issues with this study. I’m shook. Are you shook?

First, we have the issue of book selection. There’s a lot to be said for book selection here.

The “progressive/liberal” books searched were three books by Ibram X. Kendi (basically 3 different versions of Stamped for different age groups), and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The conservative books were Cynical Theories and Woke Racism, as well as…the Rush Revere series.

The Good

First, I do want to take a moment to talk about Cynical Theories and Woke Racism.

I think these are both pretty good books. They present a viewpoint that I would agree is more conservative than Coates or Kendi, but I wouldn’t necessarily call either of them “conservative” on the whole. I think both kind of operate in the space where conservative people would consider them progressive, and progressive people would consider them conservative.

The real issue with their inclusion in this study is that both are definitely pitched to an adult audience.

Cynical Theories discusses post-modernism in academia.

Sorry, I know that last sentence put you to sleep. You probably just woke up at your desk, the last person in the office. Slink out to your car, it’s cool. Tomorrow is another day.

Cynical Theories poses a lot of theories that progressive academics don’t seem to care for much, so I suppose it may be viewed as conservative in light of that. I just don’t think this is a great choice to search in k-12 libraries. I wouldn’t likely purchase this if I were a K-12 librarian because I would think, “I don’t know how many high school students are going to be tearing down their Kant posters after reading this.” I just don’t think most high school students have much context for highly-academic post-modernism. Overall, it’s a book that I would say is aimed at university staff, faculty, and people who care a lot about those realms.

Same thing for Woke Racism. I thought it was an interesting book, but it presents what I would call a different viewpoint on addressing the issue of racism, less focused on people exploring The Self and so on, more focused on a solutions-based approach that is meant to create better outcomes for people right away. Which isn’t to say the ideas are better or certain to be effective, just that I feel calling it conservative is a stretch. Much like Cynical Theories, I think Woke Racism is a book meant for an adult audience. It doesn’t have content that kids and teens shouldn’t be subjected to, I just don’t think most kids and teens would get much out of it, and I probably wouldn’t buy this one for a school library, either.

I think these are both good books, but both are books I’d pass on when it comes to a K-12 audience. Both also, curiously, don’t necessarily balance out political perspectives, in my opinion, as I would call both more progressive than conservative.

And then we get to the other books selected: Rush Revere.

Rush Revere!

For those fortunate enough to not know anything about Rush Revere, the basics are that Rush Limbaugh created a series of historical fiction novels where an intrepid history teacher named Rush Revere travels back in time to significant moments in American history with his students in order to observe and better understand history. Think of it like The Magic School Bus, except our hero is a pill-popping, conservative talk radio host instead of a wacky lady who wears dresses that are, honestly, pretty dope.

Ms. Frizzle: Fashion Icon.

The books come off as kind of a weird dual vanity project, promoting both Rush and capital-P Patriotism.

What’s also really strange is that Cato was supposedly not looking at fiction in terms of controversial titles, but in this category of conservative versus progressive books, we are presented with a fictionalized version of Rush Limbaugh, a teacher who travels through time on a magic horse.

Oh, excuse me, a SUBSTITUTE teacher who travels through time on a magic horse.

Is anyone with access to time travel working as a substitute history teacher? Why not commit and be full-time?

Let’s do this: Let’s throw out the Coates books as well as the other two conservative books above because none of them are really for a K-12 audience. Let’s talk about the Kendi Stamped books and Rush Revere.

The Rush Is Over

The last Rush Revere book came out in 2016. In the world of kids books, if you’re not a stone cold classic, that’s a long enough period to assume everybody is over it, and I would venture that many libraries that once had Rush Revere don’t stock them anymore.

Kendi’s books are more contemporary. Their publication is more recent.

Here’s a quick Google Trends comparison, looking at only Stamped from the Beginning versus Rush Revere:

Rush Revere did, in all honesty, top Stamped from the Beginning in 2013, and it looks to have potential for greater longevity. But, the interest has mostly waned with an exception of a spike in 2021, which coincides with Limbaugh’s death and is most likely a result of people researching the man, not looking for the book. And that 2021 spike was much smaller than Stamped’s.

My point is that a book that’s really not sought after for 5+ years at this point is not necessarily a book a library needs to keep in stock. The library I worked in, a children’s item like that would probably go, at most, 3 years of no checkouts before being weeded.

None of this is about the quality of Rush Revere versus Kendi’s titles, it’s about the fact that picking a very contemporary title and comparing it to a title that’s had a decade for readers to go through, and using current stock to make the comparison, is really not a reasonable methodology. To make this work, you’d have to compare Rush Revere’s library availability at its peak to Stamped at its peak, and it’s doubtful most libraries will have records like that.

Writing for an Audience

Before I start talking about the Kendi books, I want to be clear that I am not a fan of Ibram Kendi’s work, and I’m not here to defend it on the level of poetics. I think it stretches out a fairly simple concept over a ridiculous number of pages. I think he writes like a college professor who doesn’t need to hold your attention as he holds your grades in his power, and therefore he can feel free to be boring as fuck. I suspect this is why he’s been paired up with super awesome, engaging writers like Jason Reynolds, who can take out some of the yawns.

The Kendi Stamped books are similar in their messages, but they are three titles written for three different audiences, age-wise. This is not uncommon, by the way, especially in non-fiction. You’ll see a lot of books that come out as adult books, and then a Young Adult version comes out. This is because, duh, that Scholastic money spends, and if you can make an age-appropriate version of your book for schools, you can get in the curriculum. That’s right, sweet, sweet curriculum money.

Rush Revere is for one audience, which I’d put at elementary age?

Regardless of quality, Kendi has a better mind for marketing, or a better team working to get his books in front of three completely different audiences.

The Cuddly Rush?

I mean, really, Rush Limbaugh was a controversial, adult-oriented figure, and the transition to beloved children’s book character is not one that makes any real sense.

I don’t mean to talk badly of the dead, I just never really saw Rush as a person who had a desire to come off as a Fred Rogers type, or a fun-loving hilarious uncle type. To put this in another perspective, it would be weird to me if Bill Maher released a series of children’s books where he was a substitute ceramics teacher in a high school and used a magic pinch pot to take kids back in time to see that George W. Bush was not a fun-loving, harmless, somewhat doddering man who is BFFs with Michelle Obama, and he was actually a pretty bad dude to have in charge.

I just don’t think there are a lot of kids out there who were dying to see what Rush Revere would get up to next.

I don’t think Kendi’s persona is one of a fun-loving, wacky educator, either, but that’s okay because the Stamped books aren’t being sold on the appeal of Kendi as a character, they’re being sold on Kendi’s ideas.

The Nozzle

When you have brown water coming out of your hose, you could change out the nozzle at the very end, start with that, and see what happens. But I think most of us know that the problem is probably closer to the source than that.

Libraries, and school libraries, are subject to the problem of publishing.

We can only buy that which exists.

I would venture that publishing probably leans progressive, overall. There’s probably a larger number of progressive titles published in an average year. The library’s big challenge in being apolitical is that the things we stock aren’t apolitical, individually or in aggregate. Publishers are private companies, making money and creating books. They not only don’t have to be apolitical, it may be to their financial advantage to slant their offerings.

Models Other Than Exact Equality in Numbers

Extended Timeline

I think it might be better to think about the library like a ship: Sometimes it tilts one way, sometimes the other, but as long as we’re still upright, we’re cool.

If you took a ship’s lean at one given moment in time, there would be panic. “Oh my god, this ship leans horribly to one side, what are we going to do to correct it!?” And the answer might be to wait a minute.

When you have publishing trends like the huge output of titles related to race, especially by and about Black people in America, it’s going to move the needle one way or the other.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be aware of which way your library is leaning, and it doesn’t excuse intentional pushing the library one way or another. It means that you should be aware of which direction your library is currently leaning and spend a little more time finding titles that push it towards the center.

Poles and Centers

Some might deal with the preponderance of progressive titles available by buying more moderate titles on the progressive side, more extreme titles on the conservative side. I don’t think this is a terrible way to deal with the issue, however, you will need to be prepared as the public (and probably some staff) will be a little shocked when they see those super conservative titles filtering through. It’s also good to keep in mind that if your library leans left, mainstream conservative ideas may appear more extreme than they really are, just because they are more extreme relative to the place you’re at now.

Quality Standards

It’d be smart to invest some time in creating standards of quality for your collection. Because I’ve seen a lot of conservative books, like My Parents Open Carry, that present a conservative viewpoint but are pretty far below the somewhat-hard-to-nail-down quality standards of most libraries. With kids books, the challenge is finding conservative books that aren’t crappy. It’s not their politics, it’s that a book of that level of crapitude wouldn’t pass into most library collections, regardless of what they were about. This includes strong weeding standards. When Cato is asking why you don’t have Rush Revere, being able to point to your weeding standards and saying, “Look, we weeded these because of a combination of their age and low circulation, objective standards that are based on community interest,” you’ll be pretty glad you can point that direction.

Good Sources

Hey, you’re a library professional, and you need good sources to find conservative books and books that conservatives are reading. If the library is tilted (and I tend to agree that it is), ALA, Publisher’s Weekly, and a lot of the typical trade publications and resources are probably not your best bet for conservative interests. Honestly, I’d look through Joe Rogan’s guest list. If an author appears on Rogan, that’s probably an author you should have on your shelf. Plus, having a solid set of sources you check for conservative interests helps you in a discussion over whether or not the library is out of balance. If you can demonstrate that you at least spend an equal time seeking out conservative materials, you might have an easier time making the argument that it’s more difficult to buy materials of certain political stances sometimes. In fact, if you could demonstrate that, although your collection tilts progressive, you spend more time seeking out conservative books to create balance, I think you can make a great case.

Was Cato Right, Are Libraries Progressive?

The study was too lean, the selections were not well-made, and, yes, I do think library collections probably lean progressive as opposed to conservative.

I think the main issue to concern ourselves with is attitude towards this idea.

If you are a library professional who feels like library collections are progressive and that’s just fine, you and I have a problem. My values and ethics within this sphere lean towards giving people options and letting them make their own (often bad) choices.

If you are a library professional who feels like library collections are not progressive and want to argue that it’s because conservatism has become so extreme that centrism feels progressive now, you and I don’t necessarily agree or disagree. I mean, maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not, my feeling is that it’s not our job to designate the “correct” center and lean our collections towards that, it’s our job to provide materials from all points of view that appeal to our users, whether they agree with those materials or are reading them to better understand someone they disagree with.

If you are a library professional who feels like library collections are progressive, there are some factors that make this difficult to address, and overall it’s something worth investing time into and nudging towards the center, you and me, we’re cool.