The Board of Trustees of the Fairview Heights Public Library has adopted the following Resource Selection and Development Policy to guide staff and inform the public about the principles underlying the library’s collection development decisions. This includes selection and retention of physical collections as well as digital products available for purchase or licensing.
The library supports the principles of intellectual freedom and the individual’s right to have access to ideas, information and perspectives representing multiple points of view.
The Board of Trustees of the Fairview Heights Public Library has adopted the following statements from the American Library Association which are appended and constitute a formal part of this policy. (P.A 103-0100)
- American Library Association’s Bill of Rights (Appendix A)
- The Freedom to Read (Appendix B)
- The Freedom to View (Appendix C)
Objectives
A primary goal of the Fairview Heights Public Library is to develop a collection of excellence. The library strives, within the limitations of budget and space, to provide a wide range of materials which meet the diverse educational, informational, cultural and recreational needs of the community.
Information may also be obtained through remote databases, including numerous specialized and technical resources. License agreements enable the library to provide a variety of downloadable and streaming digital resources to Fairview Heights Public Library cardholders.
Responsibility and Selection of Materials
Responsibility for material selection rests with the Library Director, who operates within the framework of policies determined by the Board of Trustees. The Head of Youth Services may purchase materials at the Library Director’s discretion. Designated Library staff members use professional judgment to choose and discard items in the library collections within the scope of assigned areas.
A variety of factors influence the selection of library materials, both print and electronic. These include accuracy of information, interest, authority, demand, value to the existing collection, timeliness, significance of the subject, format and price. In selection, consideration will be given to the work as a whole. No work shall be excluded because of specific passages or pieces taken out of context.
It is not possible to read, view, listen, and analyze every item before it is added to the library’s collection. Tools used in selection include professional and book trade journals, media reviews, publisher promotion materials, bestseller lists, and online resources.
Purchase suggestions from patrons for newly released items are also welcomed and considered using the same selection criteria detailed above. If an item suggested by a Fairview Heights Public Library cardholder is not purchased, we will attempt to obtain the item through interlibrary loan whenever possible.
Parental Responsibility
Given the diverse nature of the collection, not all materials are suitable for all patrons, and responsibility for children’s or teens’ choice and use of resources rests with their parents or legal guardians. Selection for the adult collection is not restricted by the possibility that children or teens may access resources their parents or legal guardians may consider inappropriate.
The library believes in the freedom of the individual, and the right and obligation of parents or legal guardians to guide, develop, interpret, and maintain their own values in their family.
Library Collection Gifts and Donations
The Library welcomes gifts to the collection, but accepts them with the understanding that it has the right to handle or dispose of them in the best interest of the Library. Such material may be added to the collection provided that it meets the Library’s standard of selection or cataloging. When donated material is added to the Library’s collection, the classification and display of the material is solely at the discretion of the Library Staff. The donor may not restrict access to, nor use of donated materials.
Materials purchased with memorial funds and materials presented as memorials must meet the same criteria as purchased materials. Memorials may be acknowledged and marked with an appropriate bookplate. Material not added to the collection or withdrawn will not be returned to the donor.
Both donations and materials purchased with donated funds become a part of the library’s collection and are subject to the library’s normal guidelines for weeding and disposal.
Receipts for donated materials are available upon request, but the Library will not appraise the value of the donation, suggest a value, provide an appraisal service, nor recommend professional appraisers.
Withdrawal of Materials
In order to maintain an up-to-date and useful collection, any worn, damaged, outdated, and/or obsolete materials are continuously withdrawn in the process known as weeding. Materials may also be weeded if they are little used, are duplicate copies, or have been superseded by a new edition or updated work on the same subject. Material in poor condition may be replaced using the same criteria as that for original selection. Staff will perform weeding on a continual ongoing basis.
Suitable withdrawn materials will be donated to another library, or to the Friends of the Fairview Heights Public Library to sell. Other charitable organizations will also be considered. The Library does not make arrangements to sell or give withdrawn materials directly to specific individuals.
Interlibrary Loan
Interlibrary loan (ILL) is the process by which a library requests materials from, or supplies materials to, another library. Through interlibrary loan, patrons may request materials from other libraries in Illinois and from other libraries that participate in the SHARE automated consortium through the Illinois Heartland Library System. The requested materials are sent to the Fairview Heights Public Library, where the patron may check the items out (or use them in the library, if so stipulated by the owning library).
For those items that are outside of the SHARE automated consortium of libraries, the Fairview Heights Public Library will request materials that are located within Illinois and beyond through OCLC. This OCLC Inter-Library Loan service is reserved for Fairview Heights Public Library cardholders.
The Library affirms that interlibrary loan is an adjunct to, not a substitute for, the library’s collection. The Library exhausts local resources first, including its own collection and those from libraries in SHARE, before requesting items from libraries out of the system.
The Fairview Heights Public Library endorses the Illinet Interlibrary Loan Code, the American Library Association Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States, and complies with Copyright Law (17 U.S.C.) and its accompanying guidelines. It also follows the policy guidance from the Illinois Heartland Library System, the SHARE automated consortium and OCLC.
Request for Reconsideration
A singular obligation of the public library is to reflect within its collection differing points of view on controversial or debatable subjects. Public Libraries own materials that some patrons may find objectionable and also may not carry materials that others find important. The selection or display of an item does not express or imply endorsement of the viewpoints expressed. Materials are judged on the basis of the content and style of the work as a whole, not by selected portions or passages.
A request to remove library materials creates complex legal and ethical questions for both the library and the community. Consequently, this issue is taken very seriously by the Library.
To initiate a request, a Request for Reconsideration of Library Resource form (Appendix D) is located at the Library service desk, should be filled out completely and given to the Library Director.
Upon receipt of a completed Request for Reconsideration of Library Resource form, a committee consisting of the Library Director, a Library Staff member and a Library Trustee will be formed to evaluate the patron’s concern. The committee will make a recommendation concerning the complaint. The Library Director will communicate the decision, and the reasons for it, in writing, to the person who initiated the request for reconsideration and to the Library Trustees at the earliest possible date.
To appeal an initial decision on a reconsidered item, the requester must submit a request to the President of the Library Board via letter or email. The Board President will appoint an ad hoc Board committee to review the request and make a recommendation to the Fairview Heights Library Board at a regularly scheduled meeting. Following a vote by the Fairview Heights Library Board, the Library Director will contact the patron with the Board’s decision.
Materials and resources undergoing review within the context of the formal request for reconsideration process may not necessarily be withdrawn from the collection pending resolution of the process.
Any decision on a title, whether after the initial reconsideration process or appeal, will stand for a two-year period from the date of the library’s initial receipt of the reconsideration request form.
Reconsideration requests will only be considered from Fairview Heights Public Library cardholders or those residing within the legal boundaries of the City of Fairview Heights.
Appendix A
American Library Association Bill of Rights
The Fairview Heights Public Library subscribes to the American Library Association Bill of Rights which is as follows:
The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas and that the following basic policies should guide their services:
- Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background or views of those contributing to their creation.
- Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
- Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
- Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
- A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background or views.
- Libraries which make exhibit space and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affirmations of individuals or groups requesting their use.
- All people, regardless of origin, age, background, or views, possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use. Libraries should advocate for, educate about, and protect people’s privacy, safeguarding all library use data, including personally identifiable information.
Appendix B
American Library Association Freedom to Read Statement
The Fairview Heights Public Library District subscribes to the American Library Association Freedom to Read Statement which follows:
The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label “controversial” views, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals.
We, as individuals devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.
Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad. We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be “protected” against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.
These efforts at suppression are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought against education, the press, art and images, films, broadcast media, and the Internet. The problem is not only one of actual censorship. The shadow of fear cast by these pressures leads, we suspect, to an even larger voluntary curtailment of expression by those who seek to avoid controversy or unwelcome scrutiny by government officials.
Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of accelerated change. And yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of social tension. Freedom has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain. Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with controversy and difference.
Now as always in our history, reading is among our greatest freedoms. The freedom to read and write is almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience. The written word is the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth. It is essential to the extended discussion that serious thought requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge and ideas into organized collections.
We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures toward conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture depend. We believe that every American community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read. We believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings.
The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith in free people will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the responsibilities that accompany these rights.
We therefore affirm these propositions:
- It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority. Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and tested. Totalitarian systems attempt to maintain themselves in power by the ruthless suppression of any concept that challenges the established orthodoxy. The power of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly strengthened by the freedom of its citizens to choose widely from among conflicting opinions offered freely to them. To stifle every nonconformist idea at birth would mark the end of the democratic process. Furthermore, only through the constant activity of weighing and selecting can the democratic mind attain the strength demanded by times like these. We need to know not only what we believe but why we believe it.
- Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea or presentation they make available. It would conflict with the public interest for them to establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as a standard for determining what should be published or circulated. Publishers and librarians serve the educational process by helping to make available knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind and the increase of learning. They do not foster education by imposing as mentors the patterns of their own thought. The people should have the freedom to read and consider a broader range of ideas than those that may be held by any single librarian or publisher or government or church. It is wrong that what one can read should be confined to what another thinks proper.
- It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to bar access to writings on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author. No art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the political views or private lives of its creators. No society of free people can flourish that draws up lists of writers to whom it will not listen, whatever they may have to say.
- There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression. To some, much of modern expression is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from dealing with the stuff of life. Parents and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of experiences in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a responsibility to help them learn to think critically for themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared. In these matters values differ, and values cannot be legislated; nor can machinery be devised that will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others.
- It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept the prejudgment of a label characterizing any expression or its author as subversive or dangerous. The ideal of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to determine by authority what is good or bad for others. It presupposes that individuals must be directed in making up their minds about the ideas they examine. But Americans do not need others to do their thinking for them.
- It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as guardians of the people’s freedom to read, to contest encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or groups seeking to impose their own standards or tastes upon the community at large; and by the government whenever it seeks to reduce or deny public access to public information. It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political, the moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with those of another individual or group. In a free society individuals are free to determine for themselves what they wish to read, and each group is free to determine what it will recommend to its freely associated members. But no group has the right to take the law into its own hands, and to impose its own concept of politics or morality upon other members of a democratic society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the inoffensive. Further, democratic societies are more safe, free, and creative when the free flow of public information is not restricted by governmental prerogative or self-censorship.
- It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, they can demonstrate that the answer to a “bad” book is a good one, the answer to a “bad” idea is a good one. The freedom to read is of little consequence when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for that reader’s purpose. What is needed is not only the absence of restraint, but the positive provision of opportunity for the people to read the best that has been thought and said. Books are the major channel by which the intellectual inheritance is handed down, and the principal means of its testing and growth. The defense of the freedom to read requires of all publishers and librarians the utmost of their faculties, and deserves of all Americans the fullest of their support.
We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations. We here stake out a lofty claim for the value of the written word. We do so because we believe that it is possessed of enormous variety and usefulness, worthy of cherishing and keeping free. We realize that the application of these propositions may mean the dissemination of ideas and manners of expression that are repugnant to many persons. We do not state these propositions in the comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant. We believe rather that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours.
Appendix C
American Library Association Freedom to View Statement
The Fairview Heights Public Library District subscribes to the American Library Association Freedom to View Statement which follows.
The Freedom to View, along with the freedom to speak, to hear, and to read, is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In a free society, there is no place for censorship in any medium of expression. Therefore these principles are affirmed:
- To provide the broadest possible access to film, video, and other audiovisual materials because they are a means for the communication of ideas. Liberty of circulation is essential to insure the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.
- To protect the confidentiality of all individuals and institutions using film, video, and other audiovisual materials.
- To provide film, video and other audiovisual materials which represent a diversity of views and expression. Selection of a work does not constitute or imply agreement with or approval of content.
- To provide a diversity of viewpoints without the constraint of labeling or prejudging film, video, and other audiovisual materials on the basis of the moral, religious, or political beliefs of the producer or filmmaker or on the basis of controversial content.
- To contest vigorously, by all lawful means, every encroachment upon the public’s freedom to view.
