Books on Wicca missing at library

CANTON - You can find the listings of the books under paranormal phenomenon. And under religion.

But finding books on Wicca or witchcraft actually on the library shelves is less likely.

Vicki Muzzy, collection development manager for the Stark County District Library, said the district's 10 branches are missing 25 copies of books dealing with Wicca, one of the world's oldest pagan religions and often associated with witchcraft.

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"People take them because they don't want other people to read about witchcraft, and people use them without returning them," he said. "I think we have a little bit of both going on."

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She told me back in 19978 that the local Christian groups had an ongoing practice of checking out any non-Christian religious books and never returning them. They did it on purpose to keep people from reading them. Because the powers that be here agree with the practice, nothing was ever done about them. So it is incredibly difficult to learn anything other than what some very superstitious people around these parts (the local yocals) tell you about paganism and wicca. It should be considered criminal. First amendment rights are being violated when they do that, IMO.

and everybody is complacent with that, there will be no solution to this problem other than the strong-arming of these X-tian groups. This shows how hugely insecure most X-tians are about their religion in as that they must suppress other religious thought lest they be proven wrong.

And around here they take that Bible verse "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." really seriously. They also still believe that wiccans worship the devil and are evil. They also believe a person can reall sell their soul and that the Bible is literal and inerrant. Typical Bible Belt bunch here. Its' so sad, because the woman at the library who told me about this was a wiccan. I felt so sad that she didn't even feel welcomed in her own hometown either. Lucky for her, she moved to Raleigh. I hope to move someday myself. Still trying to finish school and save up some money to leave.

It is so sad that those people suppress the truth in favor of their own lies. It misleads people in such a bad way. My friend was one of the most compassionate caring people I have ever known.

I'm a librarian, and when I've worked in public libraries the books on witchcraft and wicca disappear constantly.

The thing is, they just disappear without being checked out; so there's no way to know who to pursue or prosecute. Of course, if it's "Christians" taking them they're breaking the commandment about Thou Shalt Not Steal.

We always figured, though, that about half of it was fundamentalists wanting to keep other people from reading them. And the other half seemed to be people who were genuinely curious about wicca, and didn't want to be on record as having checked out books about it.

There _is_ a partial solution, though. You just keep buying more books to replace them. We do this for other "high-disappearance" books too, like those on studying for the GED. Trouble is, it takes a lot of money that could otherwise be spent on other books. And some libraries' budgets don't even have the money to spare for replacements.

Just thought you all might want to know, though, that some of us are aware of the problem.