Libraries have a proud history of defending the freedom to read. Richard Ovenden was justifiably proud of his own library’s participation in just defence. Ovenden is the 25th Bodley’s Librarian, director of libraries at the University of Oxford. In the 1660s and 1670s it was in fact Milton’s books that were the subject of book banning.  All copies of his books were ordered to be burned. This seems remarkable today as Milton is considered one of  England’s greatest poets and one of Christendom’s strongest intellectual supporters. A predecessor Head Librarian Thomas Hyde bravely and perhaps even foolishly, refused to obey the Royal order, when he refused to surrender to the flames a special copy of Milton’s works including one that had been presented to the second Head Librarian by John Milton himself

As Ovenden said,

“libraries are proud to protect the freedom of all writers. While fighting to protect their right to write, and publish whatever they want to, they protect the freedom of readers to read them.”

The freedom to write and the freedom to read are of course opposite sides of the same coin—the coin of freedom.

In Manitoba, as far as I know libraries have all resisted misguided efforts from Christian evangelicals to ban books they disapproved of. We should be proud of them too.   And defend then when necessary.