Guest Post: Library Board Adventuring One Year In

This guest post is from Crystal Anne. Crystal Anne with An E comes to us from a sunny clime, but prefers to remain a pale indoor cat. She enjoys reading, cross-stitching something nerdy, going to see live music, and playing video games. She works as an autism consultant by day, got a degree in information science for fun, and currently serves on her local library advisory board.

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Last year, I wrote about my quest to become a member of the advisory board for my local public library system. I am now a year into my tenure on the board, and was hoping that over the last year, cooler heads would begin to prevail and the national enthusiasm for banning and challenging books and making the lives of library staff hell would have died down.

Yes, I know. I was delusional. It was a nice thought while it lasted.

Not only did it not get better, it has gotten worse.

• Oak Park and River Forest, Illinois: “Libraries on edge as bomb threats grow.”
• NBC News: “Florida school districts removed roughly 300 books last school year.”
• NPR: “Library funding becomes the ‘nuclear option’ as the battle over books escalates”

Sigh. I’ll stop with the links now, I’m just making myself sad.

I said in my previous article that I had not had the experience of being on a book challenge review as yet. In the months since, the book Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé ( A | BN | K | AB ) was banned in my local school district. We discussed that ban at one of our board meetings, because the library director said that she felt like it presaged things to come.

And so it did.

In the last month, a patron of the local library submitted a formal “reconsideration request” for a book. A “reconsideration request” is the official challenge, in which the patron can request that the book either be removed from the collection altogether or moved to another section of the library.

I cannot be overly specific about what the book was, because I don’t want to put my library system in an awkward spot. I’ll give you this much. It was a picture book, and it featured a cast of worms and bugs.

This, and I cannot stress this enough, PICTURE BOOK, was challenged on the basis of containing “inappropriate sexual content.” The request from the patron was that the book be removed from the collection altogether or, barring that, moved to the teen section. When the paperwork was submitted, the library director asked for a volunteer from the board to serve on the review committee.

Thankfully, since this was a picture book (I sigh nearly every time I type it), it took me approximately three minutes to read the entire story.

The review form took a little bit longer, since I may have taken my job a bit too seriously, and got very busy in the comment section. It should also be noted that since I had, at the time of getting the book, just picked up my teenage daughter from school, I had her read it as well. When she was done, she looked at me, and said in the withering tone that can only be summoned by an exasperated adolescent: “It’s. About. WORMS.”

The upshot of this is that the rest of the committee (two staff members of the library, with input from the director as well) and myself unanimously recommended that the book should remain where it was in the children’s section. If the patron chooses, they can escalate the challenge further, at which point they would have to present their case to the whole board. To my knowledge, that has not been pursued at this time.

This is a very, very mild case.

There are many more alarming examples of people attempting to purge the content of libraries that they personally disagree with. That’s not even getting into the personal threats and harassment that many librarians are experiencing at their jobs. Again, this part has not gotten hugely bad in my area. Which is not to say that absolutely nothing has happened. We’ve had some complaints about displays, with those complaints spiking during Pride Month, because of course they did.

We’ve also had some individuals that took it upon themselves to “debate” with library staff about the inclusion of materials that they disagreed with, but none of those escalated to the point in which security staff needed to be involved or that person took it upon themselves to initiate a challenge to the material in question. I am proud to say that our library staff are highly efficient at listening to the arguments being made to them, and then politely refuting those arguments and protecting the diversity of the collection.

In addition, there is pushback taking place. Many libraries have had to redo their collection management policies to protect against bad actors. Examples of this would be requiring that a separate form has to be completed for each item being challenged, to prevent someone from filling out a form and listing several items, and requiring the person challenging the item provide specific page numbers and passages to prove that they actually bothered reading the book they’re trying to remove. There is also the adding of a provision to the policy saying that if an item has been challenged in the last, say three to five years, the original determination remains.

At least one librarian that I follow on the Twitters (no, I am never calling it the other thing) added a question to their form that asks the person completing it why they think they should have the authority to tell others what to read.

Obviously, this problem isn’t going away anytime soon.

So now we talk about what we can do to support our libraries as they deal with these many difficulties.

1. If you have the time and inclination, get on a library board. We are the ones that can best advocate for the library when something bad happens. If the ones that love and support libraries aren’t on these boards, then people who do not at all have the best interests of the library at heart will be. That is happening already, and there are library systems suffering because of it.
2. Advocate for funding. There are politicians throughout the country that are literally voting to defund their local libraries. I think many of us have heard about a library in Michigan that was defunded over the inclusion of LGBTQ+ books in their collection. It was, literally, NORA FREAKING ROBERTS that had to step in and make a huge donation that saved the library for that fiscal year. But she can’t save every library. That’s on the rest of us.
3. Tell the library staff how much you appreciate them and the work they do. They need to hear it, especially when they have so many people trying to make their lives difficult. And yell it on social media and in the press if you have the opportunity.
4. Be aware of the collection management policy of your local library. In the event that something gets incredibly contentious, as many of these challenges have done, it would be good to have community advocates at the meetings (which are always open to the public) that can effectively push back against the bad actors, and use the policies in place to do it. To paraphrase my very Gen Z daughter: DRAG THEM.

These are just a few of the options available to those of us that are really just the people that use our libraries, and want them to continue being available to our communities. For more strategies and ideas about ways to support your libraries and fight the frankly disgusting nonsense that many are engaging in, there are two articles below that can help you get started.

• American Libraries Magazine: “How we fight back”
• BookRiot: “How to fight book bans and challenges”

I cannot stress enough that we need those on the side of good working on this. Because the people on other side are highly motivated, extremely organized and methodical, and they are working hard to undermine the mission and operations of libraries, even if they don’t think that’s what they’re doing.

If I sound like I’m making this adversarial, all I can say is that they started it.

So I guess we’re doing this.

Ed.note: many libraries have a board, but in larger systems, each branch may have its own advisory committee — and if you find a library system that has a board, a committee, and a task force, then you drink! (Kidding.) There may be other points of entry for you to be involved in your local branch as well.

Are you involved in your local library system? What sorts of things do you do? 

And thank you Crystal for this report, and for fighting the good fight!