Unlike that of the United States and Canada, the Australasian professional press rarely examines the issue, possibly because we have been lulled into a false sense of security. That may be because we have no Bill of Rights guaranteeing us the right of free speech. My first reading of Fear of words was accompanied by a persistent memory - the tune that would not go away. Way back in 1965, twenty years before the period of the study which this volume reports, Tom Lehrer sang a ditty called 'Smut' at the hungry i in San Francisco. But we know what's really involved.
Dirty books are fun.
That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in the court and say that , I suppose. Fear of words is a scholarly piece of research, notable for its uniqueness as the first attempt to document the various forms of censorship experienced by the public librarians of an entire nation. Alvin Schrader was motivated to conduct the study by the realisation that Canadian public librarians lack national information on the scope and nature of community pressures to censor materials housed in Canada's public libraries, and by t he lack of information on the ways in which public library staff respond to such pressures. In addition to the findings of the study, the volume provides detail of the methodology, a thoughtful critique of the design of the study and its limitations, including some valuable hindsi ght insights, serious discussion of the conceptual framework, a literature review, bibliography and a collection of statements on intellectual freedom.