'The Librarians' documentary explores censorship, librarians as First Amendment first responders

There have been a number of bills in the Arizona Legislature over the past couple of years dealing with the kinds of books that should — and should not — be allowed on library shelves.

Earlier this year, Maricopa County started a pilot program allowing parents to compile a list of books they don’t want their kids to read.

The debate over books in libraries — especially school libraries — is not a new one, nor is it limited to Arizona.

A new documentary explores the issue of censorship as it relates to the books we can check out. "The Librarians" will be screening at the Loft Cinemas in Tucson on Tuesday.

Kim A. Snyder is the film’s director and producer, and she joined The Show to talk more about it.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: You started this project four years ago. What was it in 2021 that led you to think this was a story you needed to tell?

KIM A. SNYDER: It was the fall of '21, when this "Kraus list," the state senator in Texas, issued a list of 850 books that the school districts should scour their shelves and to take off the shelves. And they were targeting mostly issues of race and gender, and some smaller proportion of sex education.

And I learned about a group of librarians that were had formed called the FReadom Fighters ... And they were speaking up about this and organizing and hearing from librarians not only in Texas, but throughout the country that were experiencing a kind of unprecedented wave of book banning and attack on themselves personally.

BRODIE: What did you find when you started looking into this and started talking to some of the librarians who were dealing with these issues? What did you learn?

SNYDER: Well, in the beginning, I was shocked, like anyone else, to learn that, that there was a serious threat. That it was actually something on the table in America. The idea that we would criminalize or be able to arrest a librarian for simply following what they've been trained to do, which is to protect First Amendment rights and to beware of censorship.

So, it was shocking to learn the kind of siege that was was going on. I learned that this whole framing of parental rights and those words were very misleading because in fact, any librarian would say that there have always been parental rights in place and protocol established to challenge books. And there's never been a problem with having conversations about which particular books belong on which grade shelf.

There was a process to do that and there was both in terms of constitutional parameters and local kinds of protocol. And that this was being brazenly broken, these protocol. And the books were just summarily being taken from shelves, sometimes even trashed. That was something I learned. And that whereas you'd hear repeated stories of librarians saying, "Well, not one book was challenged in the last however many years, and suddenly I have hundreds."

I mean, it was the scale, the scope of it, and how these very fundamental rights were being broken.

BRODIE: Well, so you just alluded to this, but I'm curious what you heard from the librarians with whom you spoke? I would imagine some of what was going on maybe caught some of them by surprise. Maybe the intensity with which this activity was going on.

SNYDER: It was. I mean, I was saying to someone in an odd way, the pandemic is sort of a metaphor where you had this malady that kind of just hit us and shocked the world — and it spread. And I do feel that censorship and this rise that started to happen in that fall was something unprecedented that we hadn't seen.

And I was hearing that certainly from the librarians that we started to include stories of, one is a military veteran who was fired for refusing to take certain books about things like the history of the KKK or how to be an anti-racist, refusing to take those books off of the shelf in her public library, not even a school library.

And I was learning about other librarians that were being attacked in a variety of ways. And often with the use of social media, even stalked and threatened. Their lives were threatened.

BRODIE: Do the librarians with whom you interacted for this film, do they think that this is the new normal? I mean, do they think that there's a way to sort of go back to how things used to be?

SNYDER: I think they're terribly concerned about — we all are. ... They would say three and a half years ago, that they were the canaries in the coal mine for the larger issue of freedom of expression in a democratic society that we've all cherished.

And by the way, they will all say some of them are registered Republicans, that this is not a partisan issue and that upholding First Amendment rights has been one of the proudest of values of libertarians, Republicans.

It should not be a partisan issue. And for many people it isn't. So I think that there's a concern about historic precedent and what this — that it's really not about the books themselves. Because a lot of these things, as we know, young people can get on the internet after school in whatever manner they want.

So, I think, yeah, I think there's just a lot of fear, a lot of concern — and fear that their whole profession is threatened to become obsolete. And so then one questions, well, what is the role? And more than symbolically, they are a firewall to protecting all of our rights as citizens to our First Amendment rights to freedom to read, freedom of expression.

BRODIE: Well, so you just brought something up that I want to ask you more about, which is the idea that even if a book is taken off a library shelf, one could argue that it's never been easier for a reader to get a book elsewhere, right. You can buy it right on your phone.

You can read it on your phone or on your tablet in many cases. So I wonder, you know, as you say, you know, librarians feel like they have this sort of firewall role here.

But at the same time, like, I wonder if there's something to be said for the idea that, like, you can take a book off a library shelf, but it's harder in some ways, maybe, to stop somebody from actually reading it.

SNYDER: Yes and no. We've also something I learned is how committed these librarians are to protecting particularly vulnerable youth — marginalized kids, kids of color, queer kids — who see in these stories a representation to feel less alone. And to that point, in a lot of places, especially in more rural parts of America, the library is a safe space for a lot of them.

And it's a socioeconomic issue in that not all kids have access to internet. I think we all just assume every kid — or they may have restrictions from more conservative households. So, I think there's still a very important role, especially for the rural library, to play in the lives of a lot of kids and their access to books.