freedom of expression collections at the university of Illinois at urbana-champaign

patricia f. stenstrom
library and information science librarian
university of illinois at urbana-champaign, illinois

The Baskette Collection, located in the Rare Book Room, and a complementary collection, currently located in the Library and Information Science Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have as a focus censorship and freedom of expression. The Baskette Collection was formed by Ewing Baskette, a lawyer and librarian who became interested in freedom of expression while practicing law in Nashville, Tennessee, in the late 1920s. He specialized in civil liberty cases and was a volunteer counsel for the defense in the Scottsboro Case (1931). Mr. Baskette acquired about 10,000 items in his fields of interest before the collection was sold to the university library by his widow in 1959 for $9,000.

This collection contains all types of printed material, including books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, and manuscripts. The range of subjects that it covers is very broad. For while it has many valuable and unusual works on prohibited books, on "immoral and obscene" literature, on censorship, civil liberties, and upon the law in relationship to all of these subjects, the collection also has much material in favor of or about alternative or controversial points of view. Subject headings such as Ethical Culture Movement, Heresy, Jewish Question, Nude Culture, Magic and Tramps, give some indication of the diversity of the collection.

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Monographs in the Baskette Collection are fully cataloged and can be accessed by author and title in the catalog of the Rare Book Room, in the library's main card catalog, and on LCS. The Rare Book Room also has a separate subject catalog for the collection. BASKETTE appears on top of the Dewey classification number which serves to identify works that are part of the collection.

An index, in book format, to the pamphlets and clippings, manuscripts and letters, and legal cases is available in the Rare Book Room. The pamphlets and clippings are indexed by subject; manuscripts and letters are listed; and the cases are indexed by defendant. Rare Book Room material does not circulate and must be used in that library.

In 1981, because librarians were becoming increasingly sensitive to censorship issues, the Library and Information Science Library of the University of Illinois requested and received a special $2,000 grant to buy censorship materials for that library. Standard bibliographic tools and special bibliographies were searched to find works on censorship. In addition publication lists were requested from a broad spectrum of political, religious, and social action groups who publish material relevant to censorship. These lists were combed for appropriate material. Nearly every item which was identified was purchased. Aware of the criticism made by conservatives that libraries censor through the selection process, the library bought works not just describing and analyzing censorship disputes, but also works representing many different points of view on censorship related issues. A discussion of the library as a censor can be found in Book Burning by Cal Thomas.¹

Censorship material in the Library and Information Science Library (LISL) consists of fully cataloged books and pamphlets which are integrated into the regular library collection and of clippings and uncataloged pamphlets which are housed in the vertical file. The fully cataloged material can be accessed by author, title, and subject in the library's catalog and the main catalog, currently on cards but on-line in the near future. Author and title access is possible through LCS. Cataloged materials, for the most part, circulate. Vertical file material can be used only in the Library and Information Science Library.

The Baskette Collection and the collection in Library and Information Science Library are compatible. Although some new material is occasionally added to Baskette most of the collection predates 1960. The majority of the Library and Information Science Collection was published in the last ten years. Both collections stress the ideas that surround the censorship controversy and both have concentrated on fugitive, emphemeral, and hard to find items. Examples from each collection give some indication of the nature of the collections. Humanism; in the Light of Holy Scripture by Homer Duncan (LISL) includes a questionnaire entitled "Satan's Bid for Your Child." Question number seventeen is "Have you been asked to read such books as Of Mice and Men, Soul on Ice, The Grapes of Wrath, Catcher in the Rye or any other books that include cursing?"² Dr. B. Liber in The Child and the Home; Essays on the Rational Bringing-up of Children (Baskette) disapproves of the "campaign by certain American educators to eliminate books such as Mother Goose from the child's world."³

Pornography; a Plague on America⁴ published by the Christian Studies Center is a pamphlet in the LISL collection; Printed Poison⁵ by James Shea published by Citizens for Decent Literature is in Baskette. The vertical file of the Baskette Collection has folders of clippings, articles, etc., on the Scopes Trial, for instance, and the LISL collection has similar material on the Kanawha County conflict. The vertical file material was for the most part gathered either at the time of an event or at the time that a certain topic was most in public controversy. Therefore, this material presents a contemporary rather than retrospective viewpoint.

Neither of these collections is comprehensive on any topic. Rather the collections augment material which can be more easily found in libraries. The Library and Information Science collection is currently used rather heavily by undergraduate students writing papers on censorship. Both collections are used by scholars looking for unusual and hard to find material. The Library and Information Science Library hopes to continue to develop its collection, and welcomes suggestions for purchase or gifts of source material on the subject of censorship and freedom of expression.

Footnotes

1.    Cal Thomas, Book Burning (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1983).

2.    Homer Duncan, Humanism; in the Light of Holy Scripture (Lubbock, Tex.: Missionary Crusader, 1982), p. 99.

3.    Benzoin Liber, The Child and the Home; Essays on the Rational Bringing-up of Children (New York: Vanguard Press, 1927), p. 184.

4.    Pornography: A Plague on America (Memphis, Tenn." Christian Studies Center, 1981).

5.    James Shea, Printed Poison: a Community Problem (Cincinnati, Ohio: Citizens for Decent Literature, 1960).

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