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.