Censorship definitions from Oxford English Dictionary and Wikipedia are shown. If you are choosing to suppress the purchase/promote certain books over others (perhaps through unconscious bias), or if you are choosing to continually highlight (“advertise”) a certain subset of books at the expense of others, by definition you are exhibiting censorship through the suppression of those other materials (QED).

This has been experienced in many libraries, where staff chooses to hide certain books in the collection or their recommendations to patrons, yet promote others to the public or in public displays with only those books/displays matching their own personal beliefs. Many times, not aligning to community preferences, but instead to advocate for a particular cause. This is especially dangerous in children’s collections where parents would prefer to choose content for their children. But this also applies to teen and adult collections.

Often staff may point to circulation data or online purchase data (which can be skewed by mass purchases by libraries) to justify their choices. However, such data can be flawed by omission- if certain books are never purchased for such reasons, that data will never have a chance to show popularity. However, many librarians do not hold training in statistics to recognize this.