Library of Profanity
January 8th, 2009
I’ll warn you right up front: this post contains bad words.
While looking for a book on Amazon, I accidentally (really) found a book with the title Fuck this Book. Of course this caught my eye, so I read the description and found it actually sounded interesting (a la Postsecret, Found and Church Signs Across America).
I used the handy greasemonkey script to search my library’s catalog directly from Amazon. I was surprised to see that my library had a record for the book, but it was In Cataloging - and has been for three years (there’s got to be a story here, and I’m still trying to track it down [update: I asked around and learned the story, and the book has since, sadly, been deleted from our catalog]).
But this got me thinking: what other bad words are indexed in the library catalog? I ran some searches, and was surprised at the results. In my library’s holdings alone, fuck has 12 matches and shit has 16 matches. I ran through a list of bad words, but most others also had non-bad meanings (pussy cat, Dick Cheney, etc).
I think it’s important for libraries to provide unfiltered access to information, and not vilify a work or person because they violate a social taboos (besides, profanity is often in the eye of the beholder).
[January 8th, 2009 at 4:59 pm | permalink]
In a discussion elsewhere a while ago about filtering user-inputted tags for profanity and other offensive language, I posted the results of searching the University of Canterbury catalogue for each of the list of words then under discussion. Numbers below show a general keyword search with end truncation / a general keyword search without truncation / a title keyword search without truncation.
anal 23021/7/0
anus 31/3/0
ass 48134/49/23
asshole 3/1/1
bitch 43/31/10
clit 88/1/1
cock 772/83/24
cocksucker 0/0/0
cunt 5/0/0
fag 367/9/4
fuck 19/12/1
kike 10/4/3 (all Japanese)
milf 465/0/0
nigger 29/24/16
penis 32/16/0
piss 69/4/0
shit 231/19/2
twat 0/0/0
whore 80/50/20
(Note that this is only end truncation as the UC library catalogue doesn’t allow front truncation.)
[January 8th, 2009 at 5:27 pm | permalink]
If you search Worldcat (OCLC #2220952)you’ll find a record for one of my favorite journal titles:
Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts.
Mary
[January 8th, 2009 at 7:57 pm | permalink]
I’m not sure you’ll prevail in this matter, but I hope you do - and wish you luck.
[January 13th, 2010 at 7:04 am | permalink]
In the middle school, I do watch words in books more carefully. If a student can be expelled for using the word, should it be in a book he can check out from the library? Has to be there for a good reason.