Harris: Discourse and Censorship

This article was usefully divisive, and it really spoke to me. Any selection of materials represents an individual or cooperative value judgment. While the orthodox press and its editors provide a higher overall average "quality" of reading (understanding that "quality" is a very subjective idea), and while they have a greater claim to legitimacy, I don't believe they have a fundamentally greater access to truth than the rest of us do. I think libraries should embrace works outside of the traditional press, and librarians should take on the terrible responsibility of helping patrons to navigate the wonderful mess that we create.

Of course, economics and pragmatism put a nasty kink in that ideal. There are strong incentives for a library to spend its limited dollars on materials that its patrons will use, and that are most likely to have a high quality of ideas, and that won't alienate the Community (the library's source of funding).