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The fact that BYU wants to open a medical program meanwhile students deface diagrams of basic anatomy is WILD

Defacing anatomy books for fear they are alluring is actually insane levels of delulu. Wild.

As someone in a Library Science program, I cannot imagine dealing with such restrictions on information access for patrons

When I was in college in 2012, I was trying to work on an essay about Mormon journaling practices for a religious studies class. I found a good looking primary source on the Atla religious studies academic database that originated from BYU (obviously), but found that access was restricted. I went to a librarian at my college to ask for help and she said "Oh sure, I'll call their librarians up and see about getting you permission. Colleges do that stuff all the time, it's just a routine paperwork thing." Well, we sat in her office for 2 hours on the phone getting put on hold by several different librarians at BYU until we got to a man who very tersely asked us why we were "poking our noses" in this matter. We were then informed that we would need authorization from LDS leadership and that would not be possible for a non-Mormon. My college's librarian was HEATED. I still don't know what was so scary or threatening about the source. If I remember correctly, it was a journal from a woman who was navigating the trail to Utah in the pioneer days, and I was interested because it contained detailed accounts of her quilting projects and recipes? I ended up pivoting to writing an essay about Mormon mommy bloggers instead. But nothing instilled a lifelong fascination with Mormonism like being told NO IT'S FORBIDDEN for me to read about a pioneer lady making a quilt.
Edit: I almost certainly was dealing with the "Special Collections" portion of BYU's Library system.

Hello! Librarian here! One of the American Library Association code of ethic pillars is putting your personal beliefs aside to provide the collection that best suits your community's needs. As someone who has gone through a HUGE deconstruction process from a cult version of Evangelical Christianity I have had to put aside my triggers many times in order to service the community well and order christian books. These librarians here should not be the ones in charge of collection management if they are going to be hiding it from their community like this.

As far as restricted sections in libraries go, I have worked in both public and academic libraries and really the only thing we kept in the back were materials that could not leave the building, for in house use only. We still had signage and promotion for them up front however.

I'm a university librarian who has worked at both religious (Protestant Christian, Orthodox Jewish and Catholic) and secular libraries, having a restricted section is bizarre to me. At all of the libraries I've worked at, they have special collections for historical/rare books, where students and faculty can still access them, but they can only view them in the library. That is the most restrictive they have been with accessing information.

Book censorship has a special place in hell

I graduated from UCL in London this term and visited the library many many times. The only “restricted books” were medieval manuscripts and George Orwell’s love letters; you had to book appointments and couldn’t borrow them. The main library is like a museum I truly recommend looking at pictures of it. I can’t imagine any reputable institution hiding knowledge from students

Holy cow, I was SURE the restrictions on biology and anatomy books would have been because students were treating them like pornography (being curious, sheltered, and sexually frustrated) NOT because these college-age adults were CENSORING the nudity themselves!!! 🤯

A university student defacing an anatomy book because they can't handle a scientific diagram of genitalia, or an artistic depiction of a naked person (prurient or not) is absolutely wild. That's the behavior of a young child. They are so incredibly unprepared for the world, it's borderline unbelievable.

Hiding biology books because the COLLEGE STUDENTS were defacing them is pure brain rot indoctrination. Holy hell, I'm even more happy for you for getting away from it.

I too worked at my college library. My secular, accredited university's restricted section/special collections section held books that were 1) rare, old, delicate, easily damaged, impossible to transport or something similar and/or 2) were EXTREMELY inappropriate. For example, Mein Kampf was a book that anyone and everyone could check out but we had a collection of Tarzan graohic novels in the restricted section that contained nudity, cannabalism, sodomy, blackface/minstrel depictions, and other overtly biogted text and images.

Basically, it was quite difficult for a book to even qualify for the restricted section. Plenty of horrible, bigoted texts and racist pictures and calls to violence were available to the general public but material had to he REALLY REALLY graphic and/or REALLY REALLY rare to end up in its own special room.


Even still, most of these texts were available for students to read anytime for free digitally so they weren't technically "restricted."


It is so anti-thetical to a college to limit access to basic history and anatomy. And barring GROWN ADULTS WHO ARE PAYING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS from the information is especially egregious.

Ugh makes me sad for the students honestly.

As a public library worker, I’m brought to think of our current Banned Books Display which is a highlight to induce curiosity about which books have been banned in different library (mostly school library) settings. Sometimes it’s John Green, or Call of the Wild, or even Shel Silverstein once. What you said about displays highlighting institutional priorities, that struck me.

What you said at the end about "the way we organize information is a way we display our value systems" is exactly why I got my MLIS.  Look at the Library of Congress subject terms; for example, the fight to change "illegal alien." How we describe information impacts how we interact with it.

So I work at a public library (and spent years working at my college library as well). I have worked at my rural, Southern public library for over five years now and we do NOT restrict access to any materials. Anything we dont buy, we happily request ILLs for. For years, our old director refused to buy adult Manga or graphic novels for fear of public backlash. But we now have started buying it with the caveat that it is CLEARLY marked as adult. It is definitely scary to think that this adult content may fall into the wrong hands but most of the time you can avoid backlash by properly cataloging material. We have bright stickers with ADULT on them.

As another commenter said, BYU could simply mark their books and punish students for defacing them. Libraries all have cameras in them and you can easily track down who checks out books and ban them or restrict their account.

As a librarian myself, it is always the very very LAST step to bar public access. BYU library has no academic integrity and Im not surprised that ive never seen them at a library conference. They'd probably be laughed out of the room if they ever tried to join a serious discussion.

I'm sorry but there's something a little "concerning" that College age Students might take it upon themselves to vandalize books. It says something about how they were "formed"/educated.
Moreover, it says something about an accredited University that, rather than educating students that they should never vandalize books, they choose to "hide" the books that they believe might be vandalized - almost as though, in slightly different circumstances, the College authorities might "approve" of the vandalism...

My step dad used to call BYU “Bring ‘Em Young” when I was a kid and the joke didn’t hit me until like my late 20s from learning more about Mormons lol

As a history student at a BYU-sized university who regularly works with all parts of my school's library, this was bonkers to listen to. Especially special collections! For those who are curious, here's some things I notice about BYU's library system compared with a secular state school of a similar size:

 Firstly, keeping Devout and Bad Mormon in special collections is an unusual decision. While books are common in archives, recently published books that can be easily repurchased aren't kept in special collections. Even if they're expensive. My university has a large set of fairly new history books in its archive, but they're there for researching convenience. They have copies of the same book in the general library as well. The thought of a restricted section also makes my eye twitch. The only restricted items at my university are those in special collections- and items are placed in special collections to keep them safe and available to researchers, not to protect them from students. It's upsetting to hear that BYU's special collections team were frustrating to work with as well. I know my university's entire archives team, and everyone has been incredibly kind and easy to work with. Same with the librarians in the general library- all have been super friendly and easy to work with.

 Saying that, I think some aspects of BYU's library do make sense. For example, special collections is going to require an appointment at most every institution. Since the archivists are doing a bunch of different things, they need to carve out time to find everything in the stacks that a patron needs. It's a little annoying, but makes sense for the sake of everyone's sanity. I looked through BYU's archival catalogue, and it looks incredibly similar to my university's digital layout. The items that are accessible to students generally makes sense as well (except for the restricted section- WTF is going on there?!) since we do have access to some of my university's microfilm collection. Being watched while in the reading room is normal too, in my experience. I believe it's both to keep an eye on the documents and to make it easy to ask for help/assistance.

I think this is quite an interesting look into the way that the Mormon system works, and also the fallout of living in such a high-control group. I'm quite thankful not to be part of one!