> You could say they are the censors of the ideas that get into the library.

But I wouldn't. This context incorrectly implies librarians are working from a position of restricting knowledge. In modern times, librarians are working against the factions that do that.

> but there also should be accountability and transparency.

There is. 'Books on the shelf' is a gold standard of transparency. They are showing their work in the fullest possible measure.

In short, librarians are extraordinary examples of good faith. The appropriate accountability for that is letting them do their jobs.

> In modern times, librarians are working against the factions that do that.

A thousand times this. People who think that librarians are secretly censoring the flow of information are completely out of touch with how librarians work.

Librarians take their responsibility to their community seriously. This responsibility, to them, is nothing less than presenting their patrons with all of the information (books and beyond) that they are trying to access, regardless of their personal feelings about said information.

>But I wouldn't. This context incorrectly implies librarians are working from a position of restricting knowledge. In modern times, librarians are working against the factions that do that.

Peel District restricts books to materials post-2008 and deemed antiracist, which is an incredibly narrow slice of the historical body of human literature: https://www.peelschools.org/documents/a7b1e253-1409-475d-bba... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/teacher-librarians-sp...

On the opposite end of the western culture war, we have the elimination of the corpus of queer texts at a Florida college: https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/education/2024/08/1...

Either way, it's a position, institutional or otherwise, of restricting knowledge that is inherently subject to the political pendulum swings.

>In modern times, librarians are working against the factions that do that.

Librarians apparently are the factions that do that. What books or why varies, but the "weeding" is the euphemism of the day to restrict with.

>In short, librarians are extraordinary examples of good faith.

I think this is closer to hero worship or beatification than a useful model for a political process.

Choosing what to put on limited shelf space is inherently a process of choosing what to remove and to exclude. It is zero sum.

Books on the shelf is partial transparency. What was excluded, what was removed. What was requested for by patrons but not chosen.