After watching the movie The Librarians, my mind started spinning. The movie made a strong impression and it clearly showed how deep in the mud the United States is. Not only when it comes to books and the freedom to read what you want, but how a society can perish when dark forces band together and create a concept of forcing one’s beliefs onto others. (more info on the movie here: https://thelibrariansfilm.com/ )
Shortly after the film, a debate panel was set up with Siv Christine Bjørang Jørstad, school librarian, Julie Andersland, library manager at Bergen Public Library and Ine Marie Kørra from Ung Ytring led by Andreas Hatlevik. Topic: Banned books in the USA and Norway. Andreas asked many good questions and the whole thing became a useful review of the situation in Norway. It was a relief that the panel addressed issues that I have been pondering.
What bothers me a bit in general conversations is the recurring statement “we won’t have problems with that in Norway”. Or “it’s a good thing we live in Norway because…”. I think it’s scary to dismiss everything with such statements, doesn’t that amount to hiding a problem? Several actors within freedom of expression have warned against such complacency, and pointed out that even smaller and informal attempts at restriction should be taken seriously. As for the library issue, we don’t have exactly the same challenge as in the US, but I think we have nuances to it and then I don’t want to let the matter go by saying “no, here in Norway we don’t have such problems”.
- NOU 2022:9 Freedom of expression in a new public sphere
The Commission explicitly states that:
- freedom of expression in Norway is strong
- but that there is a tendency to underestimate “softer forms of restriction”
- and that complacency can be a risk
Here are some points that I believe are red flags:
The Education Act has been revised and new Education Regulations came into force in August 2024. The law clearly states that students must have access to school libraries.
The latest figures show that every tenth school lacks a library; schools have simply closed school libraries for years due to lack of resources.
And is the library an approved school library when it does not have a trained librarian? There are no statistics on how many schools this applies to.
Among 101 respondents from upper secondary schools, 47.5% of school librarians answered “yes” to the question of whether they have experienced that certain books or other loan materials have been attempted to be hidden, moved, vandalized, stolen or thrown in the trash with what they consider “probable intent”. The yes percentage among the 142 respondents from primary schools is 37.3%. ( Microcensorship slowly threatens reading freedom )
What’s worse than a big and visible problem? It’s when it’s big and invisible and everyone says “no, fortunately we don’t have problems with this in beautiful Norway”.
What if it’s unskilled employees / volunteers in school libraries who introduce their agenda? Or angry parents who add content to the book? We’re in 2026 – books should have a checksum where the book is checked after submission. If the checksum doesn’t match, it must be reviewed.
A little good news in the middle of it all; municipalities can now apply for 103.2 million kroner in state funds for school libraries. That’s more than double from the previous year. But the solution is also receiving criticism.
The head of the Norwegian Librarians’ Association, Ola Eiksund, believes the government is overestimating the impact of the initiative.
– The standard of Norwegian school libraries is catastrophic compared to other Scandinavian countries. We are far behind both Sweden and Denmark, says Eiksund.
It is said that reading skills are a major focus area in Norway – what is the plan?
Ten years after Landås Library was saved from closure last time, there is again a proposal to close the library on Landåstorget.
– The City Council proposes to close the Landås district library. The library premises are not universally designed and do not meet the requirements for a modern library. The City Council will consider the possibilities of establishing an alternative library service in the district, according to Bergen Municipality’s Action and Economic Plan 2026-2029. The budget will be adopted by the City Council in December. ( Proposes to close Landås Library )
We often talk about the dark forces in the US that want to remove libraries and fight against educational institutions. So what can we say about the Bergen City Council? Now the library at Landås was not closed down, the city council was run over and laughed at instead. This time we were lucky, but do you think the City Council is giving up?
Have you experienced that your local library has been “renovated”? Did you notice the number of books before and after?
Checksum
Each letter has a binary value, if you OCR-scan a book and digitize it, you can create a total value using algorithms. This value becomes a checksum that can then be checked with the original checksum stored in the system for a given book.
For example; The text “A checksum from an OCR-scanned book” gets the checksum 7a51df53bf2556d441975b1bc3a45ceec2ade453c470bf30e926e2e1f1a0f6a2 linked to the ISBN.
It was a small derailment, IT-nerd, but I think it is important that libraries get everyone’s support and that we show commitment. Take for example the case from Agder about the book Gender Queer, it was removed from a library due to parental concerns. The book was put back again and this case became a clear example of the challenges libraries have. A trained librarian can advise whether the book is suitable for someone or not in terms of age instead of censoring it for everyone.
