The Christian County Library Board convened for its first meeting since hiring new Executive Director Will Blydenburgh Tuesday night. Blydenburgh thanked the community and staff for welcoming him and responded to community concerns as they came up throughout the evening.
The leadership team Blydenburgh joins is in the stages of drafting a new board bylaw and district policy manual. Some edits were up for a first reading Tuesday night. They'll be read a second time before a vote at the board's next meeting.
They include substantial changes to a specific section titled guiding principles.
The current policy manual includes excerpts from the American Library Association's Freedom to Read statement and the Library Bill of Rights. Like this one read by trustee John Garrity:
“Summary of our material selection policy. The public Library is the institution and our society, which provides diverse viewpoints on a wide range of topics of interest, including political, social and religious, without censorship or bias. Because of this, the Christian County Library chooses materials representing different points of view, limited only by our selection criteria, budget and the space in our facilities.”
He later read a drafted replacement from the new principles, which include Preserving Shared Heritage, Respect for Constitutional Principles, Protection of Children, and this section, Response to Community Standards:
“Our materials and programs are selected with interest needs and values of the community in mind. We aim to reflect the character and culture of the people we serve while maintaining professional standards.”
There was little discussion on the guiding principles change. Trustee Garrity at one point described the new principles as a “placeholder,” implying that they would be revisited at a later date and that the priority was removing references to the American Library Association.