Title: Running a message parlor
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."
Subjects: Censorship, Libraries
Places: United States
People: Gordon McShean