Running a message parlor
Subtitle: a librarian's medium-rare memoir about censorship
By: Gordon McShean ; drawings by Terry Down.
Publisher: Ramparts Press
Published: 1977
Place of publication: Palo Alto, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 237
Subjects: McShean, Gordon.; Libraries -- Censorship -- United States.; Censorship -- United States.
Genres: Autobiography
First sentence: The Orkney and Shetland isles off the north of Scotland enjoyed plenty of secrecy during the wars that made them strategic in the North Atlantic.
Description: Here is what happened when a dedicated professional, trying to make his library relevant to today's needs, confronted self-appointed censors - Daughters of the American Revolution, John Birchers and religious bigots.
Funny and serious at the same time, this story gives insights into society's censoriousness and offers a stinging indictment of public libraries, which have long set themselves up as the defender's of the people's knowledge.  It also gives an inside look at librarians, forever putting to rest the stereotype of the timid, bespectacled introvert.  The librarians here are delightful and vulnerable humans who drink, swear and play hard at being "professsional" practitioners of a "science."
Notes: "A Multinational Media book."
Table of contents: title: 1. The Outhouse. 2. Librarianship? 3. Naughty Poetry. 4. The Little Minister. 5. A Seduction. 6. A Censorship Try. 7. Strange Bedfellows. 8. Children Again. 9. Going Psychedelic. 10. Blasphemy. 11. Friends. 12. Rumors. 13. Bibliosexuality. 14. Live Poetry. 15. Resigning Myself. 16. Strays. 17. Letters. 18. Retribution. 19. Bellybuttons. 20. California.  21. Dog Days. 22. Opinions.  23. Dirty Old Man. 24. Chicago. 25. Routines. 26. Pigs.  27. Being Subversive. 28. The Great Outdoors.  29.  Drowning A Little.  30. Sex Again.  31.  Changes.