Does PBS censor certain titles?

When a specific title is searched and No reference of it appears, e.g. an Amazon listing, otherwise, available outside of PBS, can I assume PBS has purposefully omitted that title, and therefore, others too?

What  is the PBS position/policy on Book Censorship?

BTW, went to the Help Link first but No One is there now.

To my knowledge, there is no book censorship at PBS. 

Our database is primarily sourced from Amazon along with a couple other sources.   If you have an ISBN number and enter it and it doesn't show up.  Try entering it again in an hour or so.  It takes a bit for the database to update with new titles.

ETA:  The PBS database isn't based on titles or authors, it is by ISBN.   If it is an older book without an ISBN, then it might not be in the database.

Is there a particular book you're looking for?

Not that I know of, there are plenty of erotica books on PBS if that's the genre you were searching.  Sometimes books just don't show up and we have to search Amazon, etc to provide an ISBN that then can be used to get the book into the system.  If it's a new, going to be published book, there is usually a "release" date that's advertised and a certain period of time before that date, the book will appear in the search function.

If you're having difficulty finding a book, one thing you can do is try using fewer words in your search and double check your spelling. You may have made a typo in your search words, or you may be including something that shouldn't be part of the title. For example, one of the books that's listed on the home page as I type this is "The Holman Bible Concordance for Kids: A Personal Guide Through the Word for Kids Who Want Answers (Holman Reference)". You don't need to type that all out. It's sufficient to search for holman bible kids.

Also, if you use the search box at the top of the screen and get no results, look over to the left on the results screen and see if you have Posted Books selected for Search Type. If you do, make sure to change that to All Books and click Update Results. That will show you books that aren't available and allow you to add them to your wish list.

If you still can't find it, then go to Amazon and find it there (Amazon does much better if you have the title slightly wrong or misspelled) then copy the ISBN and use that to search here. If you enter just the ISBN and PBS doesn't find that book in its database, then it will go and grab the data from the Internet and add it to the database so you can wish list it.

it helps to remove any dashes or spaces from the ISBN.  then keep coming back to search, say every half hour.  

Well, I suppose technically it may be mild censorship, but "hardcore pornography" is not permitted on PBS, among other things.  I'm not saying that's what you're trying to order, just pointing out that certain types of items are prohibited based on content.

Honestly, most mainstream vendors don't sell hard core porn because of the Feds. i.e. it's dicey to ship porn through the mails. Other than that, PBS doesn't censor. It's most likely a search/database issue as people have posted above.

I agree with Mary S.'s answer at the top pf the thread, and Cathy A. offers very good suggestions. Try them.

Occasionally, ISBNs that I search for do not come up. This is generally the result of searching for an obscure book. You can also try searching the site by title and author to see if anything turns up there . If not, try back in a day or two to check again.

One other problem that has not been mentioned: Are you searching for posted books only? Maybe the book you are searching for is not currently posted by another member.  Try doing a search for all books.

Censorship is not allowing you access to the book.

Not allowing you access through this site is NOT censorship of any kind.

You might also try removing the first three digits from a 13 digit ISBN, some books are only listed by their 10 digit ISBN, I've had pretty good luck taking off the 978 when I'm looking for some pretty obscure educational textbooks.

You might also try removing the first three digits from a 13 digit ISBN

I don't understand how that would work.  The ten-digit ISBN would have a different last digit than the 13-digit ISBN.  The last digit on both is a check-sum digit.

I guess it depends on the genre...here's one book that was on my WL, I've since bought a copy from Amazon:

Landmark Essays on Writing Across the Curriculum: Volume 6

ISBN-10: 1880393093 | ISBN-13: 978-1880393093

Maybe this is only for older books, which I seem to be ordering quite a few of lately (the above book is from 1995).  It may also only work in some genres/dates, though I've also used this when looking for some romance novels to send to my mother with success.

The last digit of ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 numbers is a check digit and is computed using different arithmetic methods for the two numbering systems. Occasionally the last digit of ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 numbers will match by coincidence, but as a general rule they will not. This has nothing to do with book genre, date of publication, or publisher.