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Forget banning books — a rural WA county may close its library [1]
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Date: 2023-08
Challenges in Columbia County
This latest chapter for Columbia County Rural Library District started during Pride Month 2022, when several new books about LGBTQ+ topics were on display in different sections of the library. Someone took pictures of the displays, altered the photos to make it appear that all the books were located in the children’s section of the library and posted the false image on a Dayton community Facebook page. One of the books was Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, a graphic novel that contains sexually explicit images but was shelved in the adult section.
At an Aug. 15, 2022, library board meeting, two library patrons spoke during the public comment section of the meeting and voiced concerns over approximately six books, all dealing with race or LGBTQ+ topics. Todd Vandenbark, at the time the library district director, took notes from the meeting that show that one comment made about the book Our Skin by Megan Madison was that it would make the individual’s daughter “feel bad about being white.”
Vandenbark, who had been on the job for two years, invited the patrons to complete a “Request for Reconsideration of Materials” form that he would review according to the library district’s policies.
It was not until after that meeting that Vandenbark became aware of the Facebook post with the doctored image. By then comments had been posted containing inflammatory and threatening language calling Vandenbark, his staff and the library board pedophiles and groomers. One post said they should be “in prison, or pushing daisies up from the roots.” Vandenbark reported the comments to Facebook, which has since removed them.
Approximately 90 people attended the September 2022 library board meeting. A typical board meeting might see a few patrons, but Vandenbark recalls “a lot of upset and angry people who hadn’t read the books for themselves.”
About one-third of the audience showed up in support of the library. Vandenbark again explained the reconsideration procedure and handed out “at least a dozen forms.” Many of them came back to him with incomplete information. Rather than listing specific titles, people simply wrote that they wanted the library to remove certain books that the local paper, the Dayton Chronicle, had reported on, but did not provide any other reason for their removal. Some patrons also asked for books to be relocated from the young adult section to the adult section.
During this time, three people came to Vandenbark’s office to talk about the books, but these meetings were not fruitful. “It was clear that no dialogue was going to take place,” he said. They just wanted to convince him. “One guy came in and we talked for a long time, and he always fell back on ‘It’s my belief.’”
Todd Vandenbark
Vandenbark responded to each reconsideration request and asked people to complete a new form and be specific about the titles and reasons for reconsideration. By the December board meeting, Vandenbark’s notes show that these requests had been reviewed and it was decided that all books would remain in the library’s collection.
In January 2023, a patron submitted an appeal to the board to remove the book What’s the T? by Juno Dawson, a book for teenagers about transgender and nonbinary issues. Before considering the appeal at the February board meeting, they heard a presentation by Dr. Tamara Meredith, director of the nearby Jefferson County Library District, on intellectual freedom and censorship.
Board members asked those present to raise their hands if they had read What’s the T? According to Vandenbark, almost no one did. After a public comment period at which only two board members spoke, a vote was taken. Four of the five board members voted to deny the appeal and maintain the original decision to keep What’s the T? on the shelves. The lone dissent came from board member Chuck Beleny, who joined the board in 2022.
Board members are appointed by the county’s three commissioners and are not required to have any credentials in library and information science.
Beleny didn’t respond to Crosscut’s request for an interview about his vote, but Beleny has in the past given money to the political group Columbia County Conservatives, founded in 2021 by former county commissioner Chuck Amerein. According to its website, the group supports candidates for office who espouse conservative principles, including similar themes in the battles over books: “Rejecting the claims that the United States is racist or xenophobic rejection of critical race theory” and “Support for freedom of speech and a rejection of cancel culture.”
After the library board denied the appeal, Dayton resident Jessica Ruffcorn created a petition to dissolve the library district. According to the Dayton Chronicle, Ruffcorn took issue with the placement of books she regards as sexually explicit in the children’s section of the library. She also asked the library board to review its collection and reconsideration policies, staffing and budget. The petition needed a minimum of 107 valid signatures, representing 10% of registered voters in unincorporated areas of the county. Her first attempt fell short by six, but her second attempt gathered 163 valid signatures.
After Ruffcorn’s second petition was verified by the county auditor, she told the Dayton Chronicle , “This is a strong statement, and between the sexually explicit books and the extremely large budget we know that it’s time to reevaluate the priorities and needs of Dayton.”
Ruffcorn did not respond to Crosscut’s request for an interview.
Vandenbark resigned from the library district in July, largely due to the stress from this experience. He has moved on to a larger public library system.
Asked what helped him navigate things over the past year, he said the Washington State Librarian’s office was “enormously helpful.” Washington State Librarian Sara Jones attended the February Columbia County library board meeting and spoke in support of the library. Vandenbark also found valuable support and resources in the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom , as well as moral support and help from other library directors from around the state.
Vandenbark said other librarians going through similar challenges should find every source of support, “especially community members who will say things that you as a director can’t … I had some people like that. Make sure the board is well-educated, understands intellectual freedom and the First Amendment.”
Williams of the UW’s library school acknowledges that being a librarian is hard work. “It’s labor-intensive, it’s emotionally exhausting, especially now.”
Cindy Aden
“All librarians recognize each other as fellow warriors,” said Williams’ colleague Cindy Aden, chair of UW’s MLIS program. The program has always covered how to respond to book challenges; however, in recent years students have expressed greater interest in being better-prepared. Many of the library school’s changes since 2016 were made to help future librarians address those issues, Williams said.
“There are lots of different things we try to teach our students about building a resilient, responsive, inclusive institution that is part of the community,” Aden said. The UW offers a library school class on community engagement. Another class on developing a library collection not only covers selecting books and budgeting, but also responding to intellectual-freedom challenges.
“Knowing your community, listening to your community … all of those tactics help … so you have something to work with when people start to get upset. And you have a sense of support that people recognize what the library is doing for them. People understand the mission and purpose of their library,” Aden said.
Intellectual freedom is addressed in almost every class in the program. Aden and Williams emphasized that librarians follow a code of ethics established by the ALA. One key principle for librarians is to “uphold intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources.”
Jones, the state librarian, echoes this sentiment: “For me it really is access to a variety of information that’s not chosen for partisan or doctrinal reasons. We’re trying to make sure there’s a large amount of information available for people to make their own choices. The public library in the U.S. is a big part of our democracy.”
Helene Williams
Despite the added pressures librarians have faced in recent years, the UW library science program has not experienced an enrollment decline. Instead, it saw an upswing in enrollment in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, especially among younger applicants right out of college as opposed to applicants in their 30s and 40s with prior library work experience.
“We brought in so many new students it caused us to go on teaching overload for the next couple of years,” Williams said. She and Aden think that people understood that libraries can address the issues of racism, inequities, accessibility and humanity. Enrollment has since remained steady.
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[1] Url:
https://crosscut.com/news/2023/08/forget-banning-books-rural-wa-county-may-close-its-library
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