Knowledge Resources Discussion #3: Collection Policies and Materials Challenges
28 October 2023
...investigate whether your chosen institution for the Collection Analysis project has a reconsideration/review policy for collection materials. Select ONE of the following options:
1. If the institution has such a policy, you will review it. You will also look for a policy from a similar institution to compare it to.
2. If the institution does not have such a policy, you will draft one using the module resources as guidance. You should also find a policy from a peer/similar institution to use as a reference (but use best practices to construct your policy--don't just copy that policy).
At Central Rappahannock Regional Library, the reconsideration policy is situated near the bottom of the obscured but publicly-accessible Collection Management Policy Page:
Once material has been accepted for the collection, it will not be removed at the request of those who disagree with it unless it can be shown to be in violation of CRRL selection policies.A request for reconsideration of any material included in the Library's collection may be made by letter to the Director stating the specifics of the objection or complaint.
The Collection Development coordinator will research the title in question, relying on reviews, his/her expertise, and the expertise of other librarians. The coordinator will forward a recommendation to the Director who will write a letter to the requestor explaining the Library's decision to keep or to discard the title in question. Any appeal of this decision must be made in writing to the Library Board (Central Rappahannock Regional Library, n.d.).
It's unclear when this policy or even the greater Collection Management Policy was last updated, though internal documents about collection management date the last update in early 2022. As such, it can probably be assumed that the public version of the reconsideration policy has been reviewed recently—yet after viewing some toolkits and suggestions and other systems’ policies, I find it quite lacking.
CRRL’s reconsideration policy more or less adopts the same steps as the ALA’s official Formal Reconsideration Toolkit with some procedures modified or condensed. While what’s left does capture the essentials of the process, it leaves a lot of specifics unaccounted for. Should challenger send their letter to the Director by hand or through email? How in-depth should they describe the material that provoked their ire, presuming they have a legitimate argument to justify their challenge? And after witnessing organized efforts by groups leading to systems facing exponentially higher volumes of challenges than they can handle, how much knowledge of a book should someone challenge an item? Perhaps because CRRL faces so little challenges even in these inflammatory times, they see fit to leave their reconsideration policy so sparse and buried in an already hard-to-find webpage—and yet it doesn’t leave me much confidence in carrying this policy out should a person complain to me about a book.
Fortunately, many of the solutions to these issues have already been suggested by some of the aforementioned materials or put into practice at different systems. While writing a letter instead of completing a form might assume any challenges would be accordingly formal by the format, not specifying what a formal challenge entails obliges CRRL to address informal complaints, which “could be anything from showing up to a board meeting to read offending passages out loud to a parent telling a librarian they are disgusted by a particular title being available” (Jensen, 2022). To close this vital oversight and truly formalize the process, a standard reconsideration form could be created that specifies the criteria for a properly considerable challenge, with specific sets of questions about how thoroughly a challenger has engaged with a work and how they believe it violates CRRL’s selection policies. To narrow the number of challenges that may be received, a required prerequisite should limit the ability to initiate a reconsideration challenge only to residents within CRRL’s service and reciprocal areas—while this won’t necessarily limit the volume of challenges were a concerted effort to take root within CRRL’s localities, it will ensure that any efforts to do so actually pertain to CRRL’s community.
Numerous other procedures are available that would further make CRRL’s reconsideration policy stronger—another I find of note is Norfolk Public Library’s stipulation that a resident can only submit five challenges per year (Norfolk Public Library, n.d.)—but the aforementioned pair of adjustments are two that will leave the system more prepared to contend with book challenges.
References
Central Rappahannock Regional Library (n.d.). Collection Management Policy. Retrieved October 26, 2023, from: https://www.librarypoint.org/collection-management-policy/
Jensen, K. (2022, May 6). How to update your book challenge forms (with template): Book censorship news, May 6, 2022. Book Riot. https://bookriot.com/book-censorship-news-may-6-2022/
Norfolk Public Library. (n.d.). Norfolk Public Library Collection Management Policy. Retrieved October 27, 2023, from: https://www.norfolkpubliclibrary.org/about-npl/policies/collection-management-policy