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St. Mary's County library trustees postpone vote, ask staff to rewrite materials and programs policies
Summary
Trustees asked staff to remove or rephrase American Library Association (ALA) language from draft materials and programs policies and return with a revised draft for board review; the board voted to delay adoption pending staff revision.
The Board of Library Trustees of St. Mary's County voted to delay adoption of revised materials and programs policies and asked library staff to rework the drafts to remove or reframe portions drawn from American Library Association (ALA) statements.
Trustees said they support the principles the ALA expresses but objected to long, rhetorically charged passages that they said read as national positions rather than local policy. "The wording is often preachy, amateurish, and overblown," said Jim Hanley, vice president of the board, who asked staff to strike the ALA "Freedom to Read" and related sections and to preserve only the local policy language that governs selection and reconsideration procedures. "If you take out that section, you're getting to what our actual policies and procedures are," Hanley said.
Board President Carolyn Guy asked staff to return a clean, local-policy-focused draft. Mary Anne (deputy director) told the board staff had not yet integrated ALA statements into the county policy and agreed to revise the drafts so the policy language reflects local procedures while retaining selection criteria staff rely on when responding to challenges. "When we get challenges, we frequently will go back and use this policy to show why the material needs to be in the library," Mary Anne said.
After discussion, the board adopted a motion directing staff to revise the two documents, specifically the "Materials Selection" and "Programs Selection" drafts, and present the revised policies to the board at a later date for formal review. The motion passed on a voice vote.
Trustees said they prefer that staff translate any ALA principles they wish to preserve into concise local policy language rather than reproducing ALA statements verbatim. Several trustees reiterated that the county library should be inclusive while keeping policy language clear and directly applicable to local procedures.
The board did not adopt new policy language at the meeting; instead it will compare the current policies with the forthcoming staff revisions and vote after receiving the updated drafts.
