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Photo by Taylor Bright.
Rep. Susan DuBose, third from left, presents the North Shelby Library Board with a $15,000 check at its September meeting. At the same meeting, the board adopted new policies in an effort to comply with state regulations.
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Photo by Taylor Bright
Craig Scott, president of the Alabama Library Association, speaks at the Read Freely event at the North Shelby Library in October. Scott has been a critic of new state library policies.
The new board of the North Shelby Library made significant policy changes at its September board meeting to comply with new state guidelines, including changing a policy that led to local legislators taking control of the library board earlier this year.
In June 2023, a display of children’s books in the children’s section of the North Shelby Library celebrating Pride month divided the library community. The board at the time voted down a policy change that would allow the board to instruct the head librarian on what could or could not be displayed.
The new policies change that.
“The Board of Trustees holds the final approval for the display of library materials and/or resources, but the Director of Library Services and librarians may choose display topics for the area of the collection they are responsible for,” the new policy states.
Under the old policy, there was no specific provision for displays. Instead, it gave the director “ultimate responsibility for programming.”
A similar change was made to who decides what books are housed at the library.
Under the old policy, the selection of materials at the library was delegated to the library director. Under the new policy, those decisions “may be reviewed by the Board of Trustees to determine compliance with NSL policies.”
The changes put the library in line with the new policies adopted by the Alabama Public Library Service, which distributes state and federal revenue to libraries across the state. While libraries across the state receive the money, local funds are the primary funding source for each library. The North Shelby Library receives a tax paid by every resident and business in the library district but also receives grants and revenue from state and federal sources.
The APLS has had a transformation over the last year after attracting attention from state leaders, including Gov. Kay Ivey. Ivey had written to the board to encourage the APLS to adopt policies that would restrict certain books to certain areas of the library. Shortly after, the board elected Republican Party Chairman John Wahl as the head of the board and withdrew from the American Library Association. All board members are appointed by the governor. Ivey removed board member Virginia Doyle after Doyle criticized a plan by legislators to cut funding for the service.
At its September board meeting, the North Shelby Library board said it was adopting the policies to fall in line with state requirements.
“We want to certainly make sure we’re in compliance with any state requirements,” said Sam Gaston, a board member and the city manager of Mountain Brook. “So that’s going to be our goal.”
One of the changes is a tiered system for patrons under the age of 18.
“The default card will be a restricted card,” said Rebecca Johnson, who serves on the policy committee of the library board, “which will allow juveniles to check out books only from juvenile departments of the library.”
But, Johnson said, parents and guardians may come to the library and authorize an exception to the card that will allow their child broader access to the library.
At the heart of the controversy are books that contain or may be sympathetic to LGBTQ+ identities, said Craig Scott, the president of the Alabama Library Association, which has been critical of the changes that have been passed by the APLS.
The state, he said, is purposefully conflating pornography with books tied to LGBTQ+ subjects.
“There are so many more important things that could be focused on other than porn in the kids’ sections that doesn’t exist,” Scott said.
The state and those who support the changes say they are concerned with any sexual material in the children’s department.
“Materials with content that include any depictions of sexually explicit content will not be purchased for located in the children’s department,” Johnson said.
Other changes struck out language that had come from the American Library Association, which the APLS disassociated with in January, including references to the ALA in the mission statement of the North Shelby Library.
The policy removed the phrase “Relevant to today’s world, reflecting problems, aspirations, attitudes and ideals of society” from the Guidelines for Evaluation and Selection of Library Resources section, instead adding, “Relevant to establishing a well-rounded and educated background on a variety of subjects, past and present.”
While the new policies have been adopted, they may be revisited, said Board President Kasandra Stevens. Stevens said she had had feedback from the library community about the new policies.
“I feel like it’s going to be a process that the first policy that was put forward, it may not be the end policy,” Stevens said. “That’s what was done at that meeting. We had to have something by the deadline. We had to make our revisions to meet the APLS guidelines for state funding for next year. So, we put something in place. I hope we get feedback from APLS, I hope we get feedback from the community. I hope we get feedback from the staff, and then the policy will probably come up at another board meeting.”
