The
Library Board of the Ely Public Library, realizing that the library provides
materials for a diverse array of needs and interests of individual library users
of all ages, beliefs, and backgrounds, holds the following points as the
library’s selection policy.
1.
The Head
Librarian shall be responsible for selection of books, audio-visual materials,
serials, and electronic resources for the library.
The Head Librarian may also delegate other library staff members to
recommend titles under specific guidelines for purchase by the library.
Any material that is selected in this manner shall be considered to have
been selected by the library board.
2.
Materials
for the library shall be selected for their value to all people of the
community. Value lies in the
material’s ability to inform, enlighten, or entertain members of the
community. Materials will not be
excluded from the collection based on the author’s race, nationality or
political / social views. Specific
selection criteria are listed in Appendix A.
3.
Materials
donated to the library will be placed in the collection under the same
guidelines as those that the library purchases directly.
See the library’s gift policy for more information.
4.
The
library board members and library staff realize that this is an age of rapidly
changing and expanding information. To
expand the library’s information resources, the library provides access for
patrons to electronic resources (i.e. the Internet). However, the library realizes that electronic resources may
change in format or content after being selected; this creates the possibility
that some areas of an electronic resource may not meet the library’s general
selection criteria. Selection
decisions about electronic resources will be reviewed periodically (on a level
with selection decisions about serial purchases) by library staff.
5.
Parents
have the right and responsibility to guide their children’s choices of library
materials. The library does not
serve in loco parentis. Parents
should work with their children to select materials appropriate to their
personal family beliefs.
6.
The
library board recognizes the right of each individual to approve or reject
material for personal consideration and use based on his or her ideals and
beliefs. However, individuals do
not have the right to make these choices for the community as a whole.
The board defends the library’s inclusion of materials with wide
variety of topics and styles and will not remove controversial materials from
the library when censorship is involved except under the orders of a court of
competent jurisdiction.
7.
The
library board supports the Library Bill of Rights and the Freedom to Read
Statement from the American Library Association. See Appendix B.
The
following general criteria will be considered when purchasing materials.
·
Analysis
from standard review sources (Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, etc.)
·
Patron
demand and prominence of book on bestseller lists
·
Accuracy
and objectivity of viewpoint
·
High
standards of quality in format, content, artistic quality and literary style
·
Authors
or publishers who excel in knowledge or authority of subject content
·
Clarity
in the presentation and organization of subject matter
·
Value to
collection based on permanency, timeliness, and lack of other library materials
on topic
·
Broad
coverage of viewpoints and subjects within budget limitations.
·
Duplication
of titles will be held to a minimum in an effort to expand the library’s
overall subject resources as much as possible.
In
addition, the library will make the following considerations for special
materials as listed.
·
Local
history or area authors – the library tries to collect local materials
whenever possible. These materials
may be purchased in duplicate, so that the library may have one copy to
circulate to patrons and another for in-house use.
·
Gifts –
gifts must be in good condition and meet the same criteria as library purchased
materials to be included in the library’s collection.
See the library gift policy.
·
Reference
– because the library emphasizes a circulating collection, the reference
collection will be kept small and updated with the latest titles.
Reference titles that are being updated will be moved to the circulating
collection.
·
Sponsored
Materials – Commercially prepared materials will be accepted if they meet the
general selection criteria, are free from excessive advertising, and are
intended to inform rather than promote sales.
The library may remove titles from the library under the following guidelines:
·
Duplicate
titles that are not in high demand (excluding local authors/history).
·
Items in
poor physical condition
·
Items
that contain obsolete or inaccurate subject matter.
·
Items
that have not been used for a considerable length of time
When materials are removed from the library, consideration shall be given to replacing the title or subject matter to ensure a well-rounded collection.
Appendix
B: Library Bill of Rights
and
Freedom to Read Statement
The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.
1.
Books and
other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and
enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves.
Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or
views of those contributing to their creation.
2.
Libraries
should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on
current and historical issues. Materials
should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal
disapproval.
3.
Libraries
should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to
provide information and enlightenment.
4.
Libraries
should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment
of free expression and free access to ideas.
5.
A
person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of
origin, age, background, or views.
6.
Libraries
which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve
should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the
beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.
Adopted June 18, 1948. Amended February 2, 1961 and January 23, 1980, inclusion of “age” reaffirmed January 23, 1996 by the ALA Council.
The
freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack.
Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are
working to remove books from sale, to censor textbooks, to label
“controversial” books, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books or
authors, and to purge libraries. These
actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free
expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to
avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals.
We, as citizens devoted to the use of books and as librarians and
publishers responsible for desseminating them, wish to assert the public
interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.
We
are deeply concerned about these attempts at suppression.
Most such attempts rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of
democracy: that the ordinary
citizen, by exercising critical judgment, will accept the good and reject the
bad. The censors, public and
private, assume that they should determine what is good and bad for their
fellow-citizens.
We
trust Americans to recognize propaganda, and to reject it.
We do not believe they need the help of censors to assist them in this
task. We do not believe they are
prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be
“protected” against what others think may be bad for them.
We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.
We
are aware, of course, that books are not alone in being subjected to efforts at
suppression. We are aware that
these efforts are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought against
education, the press, films, radio, and television. The problem is not only one of actual censorship.
The shadow of fear cast by these pressures leads, we suspect, to an even
larger voluntary curtailment of expression by those who seek to avoid
controversy.
Such
pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of uneasy change and
pervading fear. Especially when so
many of our apprehensions are directed against an ideology, the expression of a
dissident idea becomes a thing feared in itself, and we tend to move against it
as against a hostile deed, with suppression.
And
yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of social tension.
Freedom has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain.
Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables
change to come by choice. Every
silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the
toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with
stress.
Now
as always in our history, books are among our greatest instruments of freedom.
They are almost the only means for making generally available ideas or
manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience.
They are the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from
which come the original contributions to social growth.
They are essential to the extended discussion which serious thought
requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge and ideas into organized
collections.
We
believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free
society and a creative culture. We
believe that these pressures towards conformity present the danger of limiting
the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our
culture depend. We believe that
every American community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to
circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read.
We believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility
to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for the readers
to choose freely from a variety of offerings.
The
freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith in free people will stand firm on these
constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the
responsibilities that accompany these rights.
We
therefore affirm these propositions:
1.
It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make
available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those which
are unorthodox or unpopular with the majority.
Creative
thought is by definition new, and what is new is different.
The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and
tested. Totalitarian systems
attempt to maintain themselves in power by the ruthless suppression of any
concept which challenges the established orthodoxy.
The power of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly
strengthened by the freedom of its citizens to choose widely from among
conflicting opinions offered freely to them.
To stifle every nonconformist idea at birth would mark the end of the
democratic process. Furthermore,
only through the constant activity of weighing and selecting can the democratic
mind attain the strength demanded by times like these.
We need to know not only what we believe but why we believe it.
2.
Publishers, librarians and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea
or presentation contained in the books they make available.
It would conflict with the public interest for them to establish their
own political, moral or aesthetic views as a standard for determining what books
should be published or circulated.
Publishers
and librarians serve the educational process by helping to make available
knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind and the increase of
learning. They do not foster
education by imposing as mentors the patterns of their own thought.
The people should have the freedom to read and consider a broader range
of ideas than those that may be held by any single librarian or publisher or
government or church. It is wrong that what one can read should be confined to what
another thinks proper.
3.
It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to
determine the acceptability of a book on the basis of the personal history or
political affiliations of the author.
A
book should be judged as a book. No
art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the political views or
private lives of its creators. No
society of free people can flourish which draws up lists of writers to whom it
will not listen, whatever they may have to say.
4.
There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of
others, to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents,
or to inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression.
To
some, much of modern literature is shocking.
But is not much of life itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers
from dealing with the stuff of life. Parents
and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of
experiences in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a responsibility
to help them learn to think critically for themselves.
These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged simply by
preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared.
In these matters taste differs, and taste cannot be legislated; nor can
machinery be devised which will suit the demands of one group without limiting
the freedom of others.
5.
It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept with any
book the prejudgment of a label characterizing the book or author as subversive
or dangerous.
The
ideal of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom
to determine by authority what is good or bad for the citizen.
It presupposes that individuals must be directed in making up their minds
about the ideas they examine. But
Americans do not need others to do their thinking for them.
6.
It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as guardians of
the people’s freedom to read, to contest encroachments upon that freedom by
individuals or groups seeking to impose their own standards or tastes upon the
community at large.
It
is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political,
the moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally
collide with those of another individual or group.
In a free society individuals are free to determine for themselves what
they wish to read, and each group is free to determine what it will recommend to
its freely associated members. But
no group has the right to take the law into its own hands, and to impose its own
concept of politics or morality upon other members of a democratic society.
Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the
inoffensive.
7.
It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full
meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and
diversity of thought and expression. By
the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, they can demonstrate that the
answer to a bad book is a good one, the answer to a bad idea is a good one.
The
freedom to read is of little consequence when expended on the trivial; it is
frustrated when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for that reader’s purpose.
What is needed is not only the absence of restraint, but the positive
provision of opportunity for the people to read the best that has been thought
and said. Books are the major channel by which the intellectual
inheritance is handed down, and the principal means of its testing and growth.
The defense of their freedom and integrity, and the enlargement of their
service to society, requires of all publishers and librarians the utmost of
their faculties, and deserves of all citizens the fullest of their support.
We
state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations.
We here stake out a lofty claim for the value of books.
We do so because we believe that they are good, possessed of enormous
variety and usefulness, worthy of cherishing and keeping free.
We realize that the application of these propositions may mean the
dissemination of ideas and manners of expression that are repugnant to many
persons. We do not state these
propositions in the comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant.
We believe rather that what people read is deeply important; that ideas
can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic
society. Freedom itself is a
dangerous way of life, but it is ours.
This
statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester Conference of
the American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which
in 1970 consolidated with the American Educational Publishers Institute to
become the Association of American Publishers.
Adopted
June 25, 1953; revised January 28, 1972, January 16, 1991, by the ALA Council
and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee.