Dealing With Controversial Material

Preer, J. L. (2014). Prepare to Be Challenged. Library Trends, 62(4), 759–770. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2014.0018  11 pages

McKenna, Charmagne

Preer wrote this article about a controversy that happened at West Bend Memorial Library over homosexual content in the young adult section. It eventually went as far as a public hearing in which the library required support from the Deputy Director from the ALA office for Intellectual Freedom. The Library Bill of Rights and Freedom to Read Act was referred to in terms of the necessity of presenting all points of view from different members of the community. In response the complainant stated they felt their values were being put on trial. In the end the board ruled to keep the work in question, but revised their challenge policy and procedure. This situation demonstrates how important it is to have a reasoned collection development plan, and a challenge policy and procedure that is complex enough to handle controversial situations, is expeditious, fair, and focused on the offending work, not the offended patron. The language of the challenge form even sets the stage- using the term complainant instead of concerned patron, for example, is adversarial in nature and can change how things are perceived. This article gives further examples of collection development plans, challenge forms, policies and procedures from other Wisconsin public libraries, gained through an online survey. Patrons were also surveyed about intellectual freedom and most seem to be in support of the concept but didn’t understand how that translated to concerns with library materials and procedures in place to address those concerns. 

This article gives a great deal of good information about how to handle controversial book content in the collection and ensuring a library has the policies and procedures in place to deal with any challenges. There are examples of appropriate and useful formats and wording for book challenge policies and procedures as well as good advice on how to maintain and support freedom to read with diverse material from all walks of life.

Best Platforms for Diverse E-Books

Lear, B. A., & Pritt, A. L. (2021). “We Need Diverse E-Books:” Availability of Award-Winning Children’s and Young Adult Titles in Today’s E-Book Platforms. Collection Management, 46(3–4), 223–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2021.1908194  24 pages

McKenna, Charmagne

This article by Lear and Pritt discusses a research project by the two authors to compare the availability of award winning and professionally recognized PreK-12 titles on 7 different platforms. These included: EBSCO, Follett, Hoopla, Mackin, Overdrive, ProQuest, and Tumblebooks. The authors looked specifically at topics including themes about gender, race/ethnicity, disability diversity and LGBTQ+. COVID was the impetus for Lear and Pritt to begin this project as the importance of curating digital children’s and young adult (YA) material became evident. These authors included 2000 juvenile book titles with awards/honors or on a best books list (2015-19) recognized by professional organizations for teachers or librarians. These included ALA, ILA, NCSS, NCTE, and NSTA. The conclusions found there was disparity by grade level and publisher, but in terms of topics it was generally similar to what was available on all other titles in the database. The results by platform were that EBSCO and ProQuest had 37% and 33% of these topics available. It was speculated though that these platforms tend to serve older students and might have better availability of titles in an older age range. School based platforms Follett and Mackin were similar in providing access to about 75% of the titles. Tumblebooks only provided access to about 5% of the titles. Overdrive and Hoopla usually serve public libraries but had quite a discrepancy. Overdrive had the best access with 80% and Hoopla provided access to 24% of the titles.

This information would be very useful for a teacher or librarian, particularly considering the expense to subscribe to book platforms and the need for inclusive and diverse material for children and young adults.