Censorship in Israeli High School Libraries: Analysis of Complaints and Librarians' Reactions

Abstract

The study sought to determine the extent of censorship in high school libraries in Israel, using a questionnaire mailed to 442 schools and yielding 187 usable replies. Significant differences were found regarding both complaints about book content and librarians' response, between the religious sectors and the non-religious one, indicating a much lower rate in the latter. More complaints were received from teachers than principals, but the latter elicited a higher compliance, probably due to their special status in school. Very little parental involvement was reported, receiving the lowest compliance. Topics of the complaints ranked as follows: pornography, degrading the Jewish religion, hard violence, sexual permissiveness, missionizing, racism, drug use, holocaust denial and bizarre sects. Pornography and violence ranked high in all sectors, but sexual permissiveness and degrading Judaism ranked high among the two religious sectors but much lower in the nonreligious one. Few complaints about certain genres may result from preliminary censorship during book selection process, but in most cases it indicates less sensitivity in that sector concerning that genre.