The Christian County Library Board of Trustees has finalized removing reference to the American Library Association from its policies. During meetings in September and October, the Board approved changes to its policies and bylaws, including the district’s Guiding Principles and Material Selection Policy. The updated policy is now available on the district’s website.
The changes follow years of public pressure for the library district to remove, label and / or restrict LGBTQ+ materials, particularly items marketed towards children, which public speakers have told the board they find obscene. That pressure has come alongside calls for the library district to distance itself from the American Library Association.
At a recent meeting the nearly 150-year-old professional association was described by one public speaker as “Marxist.” Library Trustee John Garrity has said ALA policies encourage allowing children access to material he describes as pornographic. Trustee Mary Hernandez de Carl summarized ideological disputes with the ALA at the board’s September meeting. “They have over many years have put together toolkits to push forth, not knowledge, but ideologies,” she explained, “like the critical race theories, diversity, equity and inclusion, we look at gender ideology.”
Changes include removing references to two ALA documents, the Freedom to Read Statement, and the Library Bill of Rights. Those two documents were previously listed under Guiding Principles for the district. The board also removed parts of the material selection policy, which referenced those documents.
Trustee Garrity had previously proposed greater cuts and replacement Guiding Principles, which the board opted not to move forward with, as they chose to focus on ALA references. Library Executive Director Will Blydenburgh said some proposed cuts would have removed policies necessary for library operations. Trustees Hernandez de Carl and Kelli Roberts suggested time should be allowed for Blydenburgh to participate in developing new policy language.
KSMU reached out to American Library Association President Sam Helmic. Helmic described their organization as a member driven professional association. Helmic is an Iowa City Public Library worker, who described the Library Bill of Rights as a framework for applying the First Amendment to library work. Helmic said the nearly 90-year-old document was born in Iowa, during a time of intense anti-German sentiment.
“We were between two world wars,” Helmic explained. “Mein Kampf would not be kept on the shelves of the Des Moines Public Library for ideological reasons by that director.”
Helmic said Director Forrest Spaulding struggled with the choice and faced fundamental questions.
“Was it correct to not let new citizens of our nation use their libraries? Was it correct to not have the information that would have helped us understand World War Two better, and the implications of what was unfolding in Europe at that time? And he determined that these were not the right ways to approach librarianship. He determined the presence of an idea is not endorsement. And he wrote the library Bill of rights.”
Helmic said it isn’t meant to ensure access to any one book or type of books, or to ensure the outcome of a petition or grievance. Helmic described it as a tool, derived from the nation’s First Amendment principles, meant for processing the variety of challenges and difficult conversations that may come up in developing a library’s resources.
Helmic said libraries need guidance to help navigate the larger marketplace of ideas and books.
“If publishers are publishing it, I have to assume it's because readers want to read it and want to purchase it. Right?” Helmic said. “We don't publish things that don't sell. And so, if these are relevant cultural conversations happening in American life, if this is the world that is revolving around us, whether we choose to engage with those ideas or not, they're going to exist.”
Robin Westfall, president of the Missouri Library Association said libraries are limited by space and budget, but documents like the Library Bill of Rights help libraries large and small navigate those limitations while still doing the most for their communities.
“We get that some of these decisions are made because they're budgetary decisions,” Westfall explained. “But as a profession, we're looking at having the widest breadth and depth of a collection that that we can have.
Westfall adds that the Library Bill of Rights is more “than about just the books that are on the shelves. It's about this whole philosophy of the library being open to everyone. Having programs that represent everyone.”
Westfall said the Missouri Library Association is the state professional association for libraries. There is no governance model that places the ALA over them, but they have shared trainings and other resources offered by the ALA. Westfall said the MLA doesn’t tell libraries in the state what to do, but it does advocate for libraries and provides information and guidance. She is a former librarian for the Missouri State Library and said she has seen communities go through difficult challenges with their local libraries. She said libraries have tools to allow disputes over specific items and to empower parents. She said when a more fundamental problem arises, there has always been a solution.
“For the most part, there's either been board turnover or there's just been some compromise where the board and the and the community and the staff all work together to come up with some sort of common ground, but it hasn't been at the expense of the erosion of the fundamentals of public librarianship.”
In response to assertions about the ideology of the ALA, ALA president Helmic said the organization does spend time and resources advocating for libraries and library access and resources, but only because they see those things as being attacked. Helmic said they’d rather focus on big subjects like AI and information literacy, the ways libraries can support local economies and other pressing issues in libraries.
“We also know that libraries are becoming third places where social programs, feeding people, making sure that they have heat and water and shelter during the day becomes increasingly a responsibility of libraries without any increased resources, finances or training,” Helmic said. “Those are the things I would love to be supporting. But right now, we're deciding whether or not we want to trust Americans to manage the educational literacy life of their families. And I, as a library worker, rely on families to work with us to make those decisions, and I would love it if our legislators did too.”
KSMU reached out to Christian County Library District Executive Director Blydenburgh, Blydenburgh declined an interview citing lack of availability, as of publication time he had not yet provided a written statement to follow-up question.