Word: caging
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Johnson and Smith Catalogue supplied the humor for a nation, for decades. In its crumbling pages (carefully preserved in the famous 'X' cage of famous Widener library) is enough material for a hundred Soc. Rel theses...
Although the X section does contain a collection of erotica, which, during the long existence of the Library has grown to outstanding proportions, its major purpose lies in other directions. The Cage is mainly a haven for any literature which, in its general nature, is particularly prone to destruction. Old books, printed on brittle paper, but not rare enough for Houghton, politically inflammatory publications, unwieldly collections of newspaper clippings--all find asylum behind the wire fence...
About 18 per cent of the Cage collection, however, has been put there for reasons which are similar to censorship. Yet the library does not really censor. It places "questionable" materials in the Cage for legal and protective reasons. There are certain Federal and state laws prohibiting distribution of erotic material to minors. The University acts in such situations to avoid being considered agent provocateur. In addition it proscribes literature which would be subject to mutilations if left on the open shelf. Included in this category are Esquire, certain French journals, and the more prominent photography magazines...
...library is not particularly anxious to assign literature to the Cage. Any book published in the United States or readily available here will be placed in the regular stacks regardless of its content, with the exception of certain medical works like the Kinsey report and birth control propaganda, which are regulated by Massachusetts. All materials which cannot be legally imported, however, must be placed in the Cage. This of course includes the classic cases of American censorship: the well-known, often cited, little-read works of Henry Miller, and the unabridged versions of D. H. Lawrence's more torrid works...
Some individuals, blocked in attempts to see the fascinating and proscribed, have not been content to be stopped at the reference desk. Librarians occasionally find books in disarray on the X Cage floor, as if knocked loose by a stick or similar object. They hypothesize that some of the especially eager have reached through the narrow opening between the stack and the ceiling of a lower level, is reflected in the preponderance of articles about jobs and careers open to women, as well as in the underlying assumption in all these early publications that a Radcliffe magazine was interesting...