The Daviess County Public Library Board spent much of its meeting on Wednesday working through an early draft of a new policy that would more clearly define what types of content don’t belong in the juvenile and young adult sections, along with how requests for reconsideration should be handled when patrons challenge a book’s placement.
The discussion follows the board’s decision last month to move four titles from Young Adult to the Adult stacks based on sexually explicit content. The proposed policy would give staff clearer direction for future decisions.
Board member Tim Kline, who drafted the proposal, said his focus was on a narrow category of content. He told the board that “the central issue, really, the only issue was those four books contain sexually explicit materials,” which he defined as passages “describing in detail sexual acts.” He said the draft is “very narrow” and “simply to remove a specific type of content from the young adult section.”
Kline said the policy is aimed at content rather than ideology.
“It’s content-only. It’s viewpoint-neutral,” he said. “There’s nothing in here that says you can remove a book from the young adult section or the children’s section because you don’t like what it says on some specific issue. But there’s this one category that I’ve included of sexually explicit matter that I have unfortunately had to painstakingly detail.”
Board members raised numerous questions about how the draft would work in practice, including whether it should also cover extreme violence, suicide, human trafficking, or other mature themes. Several said the scope may need to be broadened if the intent is to address a wider range of potentially harmful material.
Others questioned how staff could realistically screen books for such content, given that selectors often purchase materials without reading them in full. Library Director Erin Waller said that’s one of her biggest concerns.
“I think the only concern that I have is just how to be aware of that content, because we don’t have that knowledge beforehand,” Waller said.
A related sticking point was whether the policy should also apply to displays. Waller said displays are especially difficult because they involve pulling dozens of books quickly, often newly released titles.
“Let’s say it’s new stuff,” she said. “People want to come in, they just want to know what the new stuff is. We don’t know if that new stuff has sexual content in it … So I think there are just some little issues like that that need to be hammered out, procedural-type things. I get the intent here … I just think that with that, we just need some procedures.”
Plus, any patron could place a book on a display themselves after pulling it off a shelf. Board members indicated they’d like to add language making clear the library is not liable if a book appears on a display unintentionally.
The draft policy also proposes a change to the reconsideration process — the path patrons use to challenge an item’s placement. Under the current system, staff conduct an initial review, and unresolved challenges go to a mixed committee of staff and board members. Earlier this year, the board voted to remove the final step that once allowed appeals to the full board.
Following the meeting, Board Chair Kevin Dorth said the existing appeals policy will remain in place for now. He also said he did not interpret the draft as requiring staff to proactively screen every book against the new standards as it comes in.
Waller said relying on the existing reconsideration process to trigger reviews, rather than asking staff to pre-screen all youth titles and displays, would help address some of those workload concerns, though the number of future requests is hard to predict.
Dorth said he expects another draft of the policy to be ready for the board’s December meeting, and that the board will try to make the process as clear as possible for staff.
No vote was taken on Wednesday, and board members agreed the draft needs further work, including clarifying language, potentially adding additional content categories, and addressing logistical questions about shelving, displays, and liability.
