Libraries have always borne the brunt of censorship. Typically this has come from officials and members of the public who have taken issue with certain texts. However, in recent times the impulse to police a library’s collection has come from the inside. Librarians and curators are now taking it upon themselves to try to protect readers from the supposed threat posed by certain books.
The latest case of censorious librarians comes from the Cambridge University Library, which is one of Britain’s six legal-deposit libraries. Since 1662, readers have had the right to request and receive a copy of everything that has been published in the UK. However, this culture of open research seems unlikely to survive our identitarian era.
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