 So our first session of the afternoon of Big Talk from Small Libraries, we are ready to start with that. Heather Biedermann is here with us. Good afternoon, Heather. From South Central College in North Bank of Minnesota. And your FTE, you have 2746, 2746, still son. That's awesome, all right. I think I have it in my presentation somewhere too, so we'll see you when I get there. And she's gonna talk to us a bit about using book challenges in small libraries, intellectual freedom, something that is a huge topic at the moment, of course, in all libraries, but something that small libraries may have to handle in a specific way, in their own way. So I'll just hand it over to you, Heather, to tell us about how you do at your library. Well, good afternoon, everyone. It is a snowy day here in Minnesota, and I am really glad to be with you today, talking about a really serious topic of book challenges. And I work at a small library. I am at South Central College in North Mankato. I put a little map, so if you're not sure, it's south of Minneapolis. And actually, I'd say it's accurate because the whole state looks white right now because we have about 18 inches of snow here right now. So it is a lot more snow than I'd like, but it is what it is. And here's the number, 2,746 full-time FTE students on my campus. So we're a smaller school in the state of Minnesota, but real busy, and that's a good thing. I'm also the chair of the intellectual freedom committee at the Minnesota Library Association. So this is something that's near and dear to my heart. And I am always glad to meet all of you and to talk more about it. So I'm just gonna say that I have a lot of links in my presentation today. Do not panic. You don't have to write everything down. I'm gonna share my slides after the presentation's done. But if you need to see it, send me a note. I have my email at the very end, or you can look on the website and you can find me. But send me a note, and I'm always happy to talk more about all of this. So today we're gonna cover just a little bit of a dabbling, because 50 minutes is not enough to get into this giant iceberg of a topic that is sinking our ships all over the country, all over the world. Book challenges are happening at an alarming rate. But for a small and rural library like ours, you know, it can be especially traumatizing when you are one of the only people working in a library. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about intellectual freedom, what book challenges are, some examples, how to collaborate. So it makes it a little easier on you and talk about the importance of clear policies, procedures, and then actively engaging with your community. And I'm gonna give a little bit of time for Q and A. I know we're moving at a fast pace, so it probably won't have a lot. But if you think of questions and we don't have time to answer at the end, send them to me. I'm happy to go over it. So in the news this week today, someone from my intellectual freedom committee actually sent me this. And it shows to me how important this topic is because all around the country, libraries are being really held hostage by book challenges. And the one that she sent me this morning was about a Florida teacher who was a substitute teacher who was fired for filming the library. He went into the library and he did a film of the shelves that they had to take all the books down from the book challenge. They had new laws that were saying basically, you need to go over every single book to make sure it's not these topics, which are usually, by the way, LGBT is usually what it's focused on. So there's a lot there. I'm just gonna push forward and there's no sound needed for this, but it's horrific to see the shelves were bare and this poor teacher was fired for showing it because he was horrified too, is all the books were taken off. Almost the whole fiction section was wiped out just so they could go over these rules to make sure that they're in compliance. So it's something to think about when you are looking at the importance of these kind of policies and how they affect you and your library. So intellectual freedom is the big overview of everything underneath with these book challenges. What is intellectual freedom? It is the right of anyone to seek and receive information from all viewpoints without restriction, providing free access to ideas. The First Amendment, a lot of people the First Amendment should protect it. It's the right of freedom of expression includes intellectual freedom and the individual's right to receive information. So that's part of what libraries do in this and the difference between censorship and intellectual freedom is, intellectual freedom is a basic, right? Censorship is when someone objects to an idea, information and then access to that information is banned. So there's a lot of reasons for that. Censorship can be anything, suppressing ideas, images, information that groups or people find objectionable or dangerous. And when I say groups, I'm going to be focusing a lot more on groups today. But in the past, it's been more like a parent will come and say, I don't think this book is appropriate for my child to see. It's usually they get really worried about anything that has to do with sex in our country. So you'll see a lot of that. Censors seek to limit freedom of thought and expression by restricting spoken words, printed matter, books and our electronic resources. So it's getting to be more and more what it is and what it is not. Censors pressure public institutions like libraries to suppress and remove from public access information they judge inappropriate. So no one else has a chance to read it and to decide for themselves to make up their own minds. They want to decide for everyone that this is something that we shouldn't have here. And not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. People are free to express themselves, but false or libel statements are not protected under the First Amendment. So things to think about. And what is a book challenge? Most of you should already know since you're probably having them already, right? What, according to the American Library Association, a challenge is the attempt to remove this material based on the objections of the person or group. The banning is the actual removal of those materials and they do not simply involve a person expressing a point of views and I just don't like that. Usually there's a formal complaint that has to be lodged and there's a bunch of policies that go in to make sure that it is done appropriately. Just because somebody says they don't like it you shouldn't just take it off the shelves. I don't like this cookbook. No, there's a lot more to it. So you're seeing it a lot more. And I know when I first was a baby librarian you'd see it every so often, but it has exploded. Since after 2020 we're seeing like 2021 they had 729 attempts to censor library resources. Now, the last time I checked in August 2022 there is up to 681 bans and it has surpassed that. So 1651 unique titles were targeted. And we're seeing more than 70% of the censorship attempts targeted on multiple titles. So what's happening is there are groups usually parent groups that are sending packets huge list of books that they are feeling like they don't want to have on the shelves. Usually in K through 12, also public libraries. I work in an academic library. We don't see it very often, but it's out there. And you get people that are very targeted to certain books and they don't want to see them anywhere. And we're seeing it rising. We're seeing it's usually about 40% started by parents. We'll see 24% by patrons. You'll see it in the board or the administration which mind you, things to worry about is that a lot of the groups that are targeting book challenges are finding political ways to get power so they can push this through. They're getting people put on to library boards. They're getting people put into city government, state government. They are going all the way to the top so they can sometimes even remove librarians or people who are in the way because this is an agenda. And interestingly enough, 6% librarians and teachers are doing challenges. And I think sometimes that's because they may think it's inappropriate for the reading level. It's inappropriate for the age level. So there are good reasons to question things but we're seeing it to be at a level where I feel that it is hate masquerading as concern and that the reason that people are protecting for the children is sort of a way to get the majority of people to go along with it whereas is it actually a good idea for someone to get rid of book and most of the people haven't even read the books or even looked at the books that they are saying should be banned or challenged because it's coming from groups, right? So where they take place, 44% are school libraries so for the kids, right? 37% public libraries, 18% schools and 1% academic or other. And we're seeing most of them are about books but we're seeing more and more of them about displays here in Minnesota. We had a challenge to a display about both LGBTQ. I think it was in June and then they had Black Lives Matter display and both of those were taken down with a lot of discussion. So it's not just books, you're seeing more and more things like films and other so just be aware that it is going across the board, not just books. And we're seeing it all around the country. It's a lot more, I'm in Minnesota so I'm noticing it says one to 10 bands per school books, per group of people. So then you'll see like down in Florida where they had the new rules. It's like a darker red and Texas, it's a lot. So look at where you live in the country or if you're Canada, think about where are these challenges coming from and how it's spreading out through the country. And I would just like to note that data is through June of last year. I know that here in Nebraska we're in that gray zero. Well, we're not anymore unfortunately. Oh yeah, and I was saying looking at North Dakota they just had some rules go through so they're having a bunch too. So it has exploded, you are so right. So yeah, don't be complacent like, oh I'm in Nebraska, there's nothing there. I don't have to worry. Yes, you have to worry. We all have to worry, it's really taking over. And I laugh at this every time I see this clip. Why is it happening now? This is from the Marks Brothers, you remember them? The Horse Feathers movie. And I should have done a librarian trigger warning on this, books were hurt in the video clip. There are a lot of reasons for book challenges and some good, but some very nefarious. I feel like there's, it used to be a book challenge would come from a parent, concerned parents, I love them. And it's a good time for a discussion and to say, you know, you always have a right as a parent to decide what your kids read and what they don't read but do you feel like it's something that you should decide for everyone's kids or every kid? And I would prefer that people, instead of focusing on getting rid of books say, well, you don't like that book, are there other books that you think would be good to head to the library that would, you know, help round this point of view out and, you know, have a discussion about it. I mean, you know, it may not, it may not be a deescalation moment. You know, I always feel like it's a good time for conversation. You know, you have a parent come in and they're probably angry cause little Bobby is reading something that they thought was inappropriate. And, you know, like let's talk about it but like calm people down, relax, breathe and don't get judgy, you know? That's gonna be the hardest part for a lot of us, especially like, you know, I work in a library where we have two employees here and then the other campus there, they have two employees and they are 40 miles away. So we are not a united front where we can all just back each other up. And some of you may be the only person in your library and maybe have volunteers or maybe it's just you. You may have administrators who have no idea what you're about, why it's important to protect intellectual freedom in your library and to go against book challenges. They may be like, oh, you know, this parent wants us to get rid of a book. It's just not worth the hassle, just do it. Well, if you start doing that, eventually we're gonna have no books. They're all going into the garbage because nobody stood up for them. And we need to stand up for them. We need to be defenders of freedom and the freedom to read and ideas and be passionate about it. It's really easy to just go complacent and go, okay, but don't do that because that's the slippery slope where we start burning books and what's next. So, but why is it happening now? I do believe that there are a lot of parental groups around the country that are working together. And I'm gonna show you a few that I've found that are really getting traction. And I think they are the main instigators of this. And you'll see again and again, it's the same kind of list of the same kind of books, the same kind of ideas that they want to go against. So they reflect on the work of growing number of advocacy organizations that have made demanding censorship of certain books and ideas in schools part of their mission. And that comes from the Penn America page, which is a great resource too. So the activist groups that I'm talking about, there's a couple I'll mention, there's way more than this. I hate to say it, it makes my stomach kind of turn. Is there parent groups like Moms for Liberty that the last time I checked it, over 70,000 members in, it said 33 states, but I think it's more like 45 states at this point, 165 plus chapters, they're everywhere. Ron DeSantis, they're connected to the Moms for Liberty. They're very powerful group. And I always say, if you are fighting something, you should understand it. So I have links and you'll be able to check this out later, but take a look at that group. That's one of the big ones. There's another group called No Left Turn in Education that says that they want to emphasize the role of the parent as a primary custodian and authority of their child, which I'd say all parents should be, right? But they maintain the public book hit list in a school hit list, which I think is very scary, very Orwellian even. I think that they are going to get people. And that's the thing I'm most afraid of is that if we don't work together, groups like this are really trying to get rid of librarians. They really are trying to get their agenda put through. So we need to be just as powerful as librarians in fighting this. So the third group I'm going to mention is the Parents Defending Education. Offers step-by-step guides to filling out FOIAs and showing up to school board meetings against indoctrination is what they say. So know that these groups are out there. And this is, I think, a huge part of it. And I've thought about this a lot lately is that social media has made it so easy for groups to get together and kind of plan and strategize about how to get what they want to happen. And they're successful. What we need to do is to have our own groups. And I know sometimes that's hard when you're already busy. You already are doing everything. I am where all the hats. I'm the administrator. I'm the cataloger. I'm the reference librarian. Also now I have to be an expert in intellectual freedom and book challenges. It makes it hard, I know. But you don't have to do this alone. And I think that if you work with other librarians in your area, sometimes just go and talk to people that you know are also interested in it. You guys can team up. You don't have to do anything alone. And who else can help? There's a lot of groups. Your local library associations, like in Minnesota, it's a Minnesota library association. Your state library associations are great at helping. If you have a teacher's union, often you can get backing from, they'll give you support. I am in an intellectual freedom committee in our state. Does your state have one? Look, we just switched our times just so we can have more K through 12 people available to join our meetings. We need to make it so we can all help each other. And that's why I'm here today, too, is I know that we all need as much support as we can. There's other, like every library, Penn America, the First Amendment Project. You have your local ACLU chapters. Freedom to Read Foundation through ALA, great. National Coalition Against Censorship. Try these out, you know, red, wine, and blue. There are a lot of groups that want to help you. And they will walk you through the process. You don't ever have to be alone. Even if you attend a presentation and you're like, I know I had their beaterman. She's a passionate person about it. You know what? I may know somebody in your neck of the woods that can help you out. So just reach out. You know, it never hurts to do that. Oops, I think it crashed. Can you still hear me? Yes. Oh, is my thing still showing or did it disappear? I was just checking your chat. Oh, Lord, let's see, how do I get that back? Maybe just that your PowerPoint did something. I think it crashed. Yep, I see that now. Let me just bring it right back up. Sorry about that, guys. No, it's okay. I hope you have that in there. Technology, let's see. There we go. Let me go back to where it was. Sorry, we'll go right there. I got off on a tangent too. Okay, let's see if I can do that slideshow from the current slide and then I can probably get to switch it again. Like that. There we go, perfect. There we go. So derailed myself a little bit. Crash, small and rural libraries like yours and mine, we have limited resources. We really have tight-knit communities, but worse, the communities can be both good and bad. What we get sometimes a little more conservative viewpoints when we're out here and it's not always an easy sell. You may be the only one who believes a certain way and you may feel like there's a tidal wave of people going against you. I still feel that you need to do your best to try to do what's right. And it's always a challenge when you feel like everyone is going against that, do your best. But there are strategies for addressing book challenges and small and rural libraries. And I think that it makes it a little bit easier. Number one, I would like you to look at your policies. If you don't have a policy already, it's a surprise, but usually the thing that's wrong with the policy not isn't that it exists. You may have something, but do you know what it says? Do you know if it addresses things like if you have a group that's sending you requests, what if they don't live in your area? Do you still take challenges to a book if it's a parent that doesn't even live in the area or their child doesn't go to the school you teach at or in the public library that you work at? If it's not in the region, do you have something in the policy that says they need to? They need to have a library card. If they are doing a challenge, does it have to be a formal written one? Is it enough that they can just tell you or send you an email? Do they have to have read it? You know, often some of the best forms that I've seen at least say, okay, cite where you say the problem is because some of the people putting these book challenge requests haven't even looked at the book. They are getting it from a group, a parents group that said, this is horrible. I'm like, okay, what's wrong with it? You know, okay, so former review committee, if it's just you, it's just you, but it's always good to have another set of eyes. Like if you have a parent that comes in, another person, even if it's just another teacher, someone that can just come and sit with, so that way it's not escalating. And you don't get it, he said, she said, you'll have another person to go, yep, this is what they said. Number three, communicating with the challengers and other stakeholders. Once you have the policies, make sure that people know what the policies are. Make sure you are very good about transparency. Make sure that people know what's gonna happen next. How long does it take? Where does it go to next? If we can't decide, what's next step? Make sure that across the board people know. And then if you like, let's say you're in a public library, who in your community needs to know? Do you need to report this to the news organizations? Make sure that you know what the process is. And I think it makes it a little more complicated. We have all different kinds of libraries here today. So there's a lot of different ways that it can go. Know what it is for you. And then I think it's really good to think about providing alternative resources and promoting diverse perspectives. So you are working with the community, whatever your community is, public library, if you're K to 12, like if you're an academic, think about if the person is a problem with this resource, is there another resource that could be useful for them? We're trying to get people to read. We're not trying to push people away from the library. We wanna make sure that they're all a part of it. But at the same time, I'd rather, if we could just not be getting rid of books, maybe adding different perspectives to this and talk about it. So I think it's a good start. We'll get it, so comment here. Someone has a suggestion that I'm back on your previous slide that someone says, I've seen some challenge committees include the students and teens and young adults. The people who they're, yeah, the people that are actually, they're claiming they want to protect. Here are those actual teens and students telling you what they think. I love it, you know, teens are so cool. I mean, honestly, I think we're trying to protect them and it's like, what did they think about this? You know, maybe some of them agree. Like, oh, you know, but at least giving them a voice in it, it's very democratic. I agree, love it. Yeah, and another, they said in another training, some libraries, they heard that some libraries include a cost analysis or will have charges to process multiple challenges because of the time, energy and resources it takes for the library to go through the challenges. That is a perfect point. It's so expensive. You think about what you're paying all these people that are on a book challenge committee, how much time it takes to go over each book. Sometimes you have everyone reading the book and then discussing it. They're getting paid to do all of that. How many book challenges you have here, it can get through the roof and our budgets are already cutting, you know? I just don't know how we can keep up with it at that point. And then what about multiple? Like, if you've gone through the challenge once, do you do it again every time it comes up? That's one that I think we have, I've seen a policy where it says that, I think it would, I'm trying to remember of course, something like, if it's already been challenged within the last three years, this particular title, you can't submit a new challenge for a title that's already been challenged by someone else in the last three years. Now the person challenging might not know that, but then the library would tell them, sorry, somebody already challenged that one last year and here's the results of it. So we're not doing it again. No. We already looked at it. And it might be smart to have a website or something that talks about which books had been challenged and their results, maybe even a document that you have somewhere so that way people, they can see that you're not just saying, no, we've already done that because they're gonna be suspicious about it, you know? And it's good to be as transparent as possible. I agree. That's why having that policy, I cannot emphasize enough how important having a book challenge or book reconsideration policy is. Actually having policies for everything is important, but in this case especially, get it in writing, have it out there, do it before these things come up to your life. We've never had this happen before. Don't just assume it won't ever happen. Be prepared and get that policy written. Look at the ALA, American Library Association there's a lot of good resources and info and wording to use. Look at other libraries, policies, they're out there online. Use your... Absolutely. And just have it laid out there. So if someone does come, you've got it all in writing is exactly what they are supposed to do. Do they have to? Like you said, you've got to have read it. You have to be one of our actual patrons of our library. Exactly. So all these things, but you can put whatever you want in your policy. There is nothing that says what you can and cannot have in your policy. So put everything you can and possibly think of. You're preaching to the choir. It just protects you, honestly. And later you'll be so grateful. You will. If you have it all in place, you will not be sorry that you had it already planned out. And I'd revisit it and see what other people are adding to theirs because it's, you know, like what should we do? Do it now that things have changed in the climate and the way things are going in our country at least and other ones as well. You might need to update and definitely take a look at it again. We have a group of school librarians in Minnesota that went through their policies against each other. I mean, not against, but with each other to see what's working and what isn't. And so that way people don't have to reinvent the wheel. I thought that was very bright and a very good idea. That way, you know, like, hey, you know, we just had this challenge and this thing in our policy actually held us back. So we're going to change it from now on, but I wish we had known. And that's the kind of stuff that we need more of is where we do more sharing and help each other out, especially small libraries. Absolutely. So more, you actually like segwayed perfectly into that best resources that you can have. One of my favorites is intellectual freedom manual. I have it right at my desk and it has so many good things and the ALA website also has a lot of these resources, but it has how to do policy checklists, how to protect your library, like example codes of ethics, it talks about freedom to read and all these things that I think are just great. It's a good book to have just because it kind of walks you through the whole process of how to get started. So definitely one that I recommend and ALA website, perfect for getting started. They have lots of examples, like setting up your challenge policy purpose and having templates. I love not having to come up with things on my own because I'm not a legal person. I'm not a person that knows everything about some of the administration sides of things. So them having these things are great. So this is on the ala.org tools challenge support site and it talks, they have so many great templates that you can use and you can edit it to your own library and see if this will help you. So there's a lot of these kinds of things there. So please do check it out. While you're on that slide, because someone had a question that might relate to this because here I see there's the resource on which you're commenting in this particular example and it's all physical things that the library has. This person wants to know, would you suggest adding programs to a challenge policy? For example, I had someone upset and I'm not surprised sadly about my D&D program, Dungeons and Dragons program. Of course, people still don't know. They're like, it's the devil. It's not. But anyway, is that something that this could be part of or would that be a separate topic? I think you can have it exactly like that. You can, like this one that they have, it says books and digital resources and games. You could include it in one. It depends on how many forms you really want to have. You could have a unique form for each, but I do think that with activities, that's like, it's like kind of a more gray territory because it may be a once a month thing. It may be once a year thing. There could be, I know we had a lot of this in our state for the Dread Queen story hour and story time. And I think that you will need to have a form for that. It may just as well be on the same thing, but because if you look at the template that we have, it's like, what brought this to your attention? Have you attended instead of examined it? Have you attended it? Why do you have a concern? Yeah, definitely modified for ballot programs, yeah. Yeah, I would modify it and see what works because I'm sure other libraries have them already, but it would be very simple to modify this. I would be prepared for it just about anything. Anything that they could, like you could be have art that's hanging in your library that somebody has problems with. They could be things that they don't even check out that are just there. People love to complain. So have a form for that. So that way there's a way that you can deal with it and then you document it. Because if you don't document it and somebody just takes a complaint and then nothing gets done, that's a valid problem. The patrons need to have some sort of outcome. Either it's, we looked at it, we talked about it, but we decided it's staying. At least then they know that you took it seriously and you worked on it. If you never let them know again, then they're gonna have more hard feelings and then that's when things snowball out of control. And then the question here, while we're on this form here too, which I think I know the answer to already, would you require a separate challenge form for each book being challenged? I think you have to look at them case by case. I think you have to. I know that a lot of the big groups that are targeting they'll send whole lists. And I think what's part of the idea behind each book being separate is that it makes them fill out the form. Do you really want to? How much do you want to get rid of this book? Then you're gonna have to fill out the paperwork for each one. And I think they need to put the information in. And I think it's important because each book, each item, each program, whatever is different is going to need to be evaluated. Separately, like I said, in the case about itself, you can't say this group of titles, this type of book, I want all of these types of books that's not, they're all so different. There's no way to do that. No, right? That would really be meaningful from either side, yeah. Yeah, I think that's, I like your word meaningful in it. And I think that it has to be, it has to show both sides. It has to show that we're not annoyed by it. We take it seriously. And we want to make sure that it's addressed in a serious way. But if they are just putting it on a post-it note and throwing it in a bin on top of a book, like this should be banned in no signature, how do we follow up on that? I don't know anything about that, no. I'm like, yeah, that's probably not gonna happen. If you really want it, come in and talk to us. And then we can work with you. All right, okay. I want to make sure we get through everything on your side. Yeah, I know I'm, yes. So I'm gonna kind of fly through this a little bit, but this is the same kind of idea. You should have an action plan and a preparedness audit. So basically it's what I'm saying is when you're doing forms, getting your institution ready for both challenges. And this is just all levels of preparedness from getting the policies figured out to talking to the people in your library, be it you or a group and how do you deal with it? So the preparedness audit is basically a technique for assuring that your goals and policies of collection development, what you're buying is supported by its practices. So that way you are not, like you're not having someone abuse you, you're not abusing anyone from the organization and you are protecting yourself from liability and public relations problems, which are all headache and a nightmare and we don't want that. So to do that, I'm gonna send you to the ALA tools again. Please look at the ALA website, it's wonderful. I'm a member of ALA, it's an expensive membership, but I find it's totally worth it. They have the challenge support page has everything about how to do challenge reporting, how to deal with challenges and concerns, how to do formal requests and how to, they have a report censorship toolkit that I think is really useful and I totally welcome you to play with this because it will get you brainstorming what's gonna work for your organization and it's a great start. Definitely play with that. Step two, getting buy-in. Talk to everyone who would have a challenge, be it your management team, make sure that they know that these things are coming. If you work with city council or library board, talk to them about what do we do when we get book challenges, prepare. If you already had them, now that we've had a book challenge, is there anything we should do differently? Definitely talk to the librarians, the volunteer services people, make sure that parent groups, oh, they can be your greatest advocates. If you have people who are passionate about reading, get them on your side, people. These are the ones, we need our own army. We need people that are gonna help us. So definitely, definitely get buy-in from everyone. And then start with the collection development policy, make sure that if somebody's like, why are you buying these racy books? You go, well, it's not a racy book and this is how it fits into our collection and we have thought about everything and this is why. So make sure that you have the LA as a selection and reconsideration policy toolkit for public school and academic libraries, great resources, great, great, great. And prepare your staff. This is something that I think we skip over because we're so busy, but I'd say even like sit down and do role play a little bit, go have one person be the angry parent and like how do you react? How do you get people to calm down? Make sure that you aren't rolling your eyes. Make sure you're breathing. Make sure you're not clenching and looking angry. Don't point, don't do stuff like that. Just be, sometimes just sitting down with people is good and sometimes a standing when you get people across their arms, really look open. In the inside, you might be screaming and that's okay to scream on the inside, but don't show it with your face. And acknowledging their concerns is sometimes all they need. They don't want to take that extra step of officially putting in the paperwork and the complaint or the challenge, but they just want you to know I'm concerned about this. And you can explain to them, like you said, this is our collection development policy. This is why we have these particular titles. No, you're correct. This is not a good book for your child as you decided it's not, but it may be for another parent. Absolutely. Decide for other parents. What do you think? And why would somebody feel like they can decide for everyone? I'm just having a conversation. Yeah, if this is the whole situation. I love that. And it just makes things a lot smoother. And that is one thing that I've really worked on over the years is like calming down uncomfortable situations. It's a skill. So if you're not comfortable with it, that's something to work on. You know, we're not perfect on any of this. And no matter how prepared you think you are and you get the wrong person coming in and yelling at you the wrong way, it can throw off your game. So play pretend a little bit and see how you would deal with it if somebody was yelling at you about something or in a weird way, you know? So, you know, we can work on that together. And then you perform your audit. Just have a timeline. You know, always put something on it every month. You know, like, what am I gonna work on this week that has to do with our audit? And make sure that it's something you're reviewing. Maybe you need to like update it, make recommendations, work on it. Just do it, right? Just do it. And then tell the story of what you did. How did you do it? Write it, write down how the process went. And was it necessary? Did it work? How did it work out? And then talk to other librarians. See if they have ideas on how to make things better. Cause I'm gonna say like in a small library, I don't know everything there is because I talk to people. I learn a lot, but I've never had to go through it in a public library setting before. So you may have a different experience than I have. So talk to each other. Share what you know. And then what's next? You integrate it, regular checkups, staff training. If something didn't work, when it happens, every time, every time you have a book challenge come in, talk to each other. Go, how did it go? Do you feel like it went well? Should, is there stuff we should be working on to make it better? It's an ongoing process and there's nothing wrong with that. When you're a small library, you do the best you can. But being prepared will take a lot of that, the pain away from it. And I really encourage you to do that. So these are again, some of the resources for who can help, like Penn America, I had like intellectual freedom committees. I think that it's just a good thing. So what I want you to do, keep up with intellectual freedom news first. Know what's coming. If you Google intellectual freedom committee news, American Library Association, every Friday they come out with new news and it is the book challenge section has exploded in the last few years, but you can see what's happening. And if there are things that are going on in your state, notice it, because that means it's getting closer and closer to you. So be ready to attend meetings. Get to get out there, put your face out there, talk to other librarians, be on the intellectual freedom committee, start your own intellectual freedom committee if there isn't one in your state. Get it going and then work on book challenges to support each other. That's all you guys have to, you know? I don't think of librarians as being meek at all. We are fierce when it comes to this. So we can help each other. Get the word out in your community. Get the people that really want to participate and help you out and we can get them in on our fight. And one of the things I always encourage people, both librarians and not library, is the United Against Book Bands movement. Anyone can join and they are working really hard to fight the book bans. And we need a united front, you know? And do we have more questions? Yes, yes. We do have lots of comments and questions that have come in definitely. This is a very, well, I don't know what the right word is, but it's lots of stuff's going on in this. Yes, it's exploding in this country and this country, but probably everywhere. And it is a concern for libraries. So some things I'll just read off here that someone suggested also another helpful resource is your state library. I'm not sure if you had that on your slide. Yes. Your actual state library is a great resource. They usually have more of the legal side. There's often legislative days that you can go for libraries. Talk to your leaders. Yeah, we have a good day. Ours is coming up in March here in Nebraska, where it's a day where librarians across the state go come to the Capitol and have lunch and speak with their senators about library issues of all types, any type of library concerns or promoting. And so does this next week. That's a wonderful thing to be a part of. And you have a captive audience of all your legislators. So use that. We feed them lunch while we don't do it. Our state association doesn't let their feed lunch, so they, yeah. Food. You get the best of everything. You get to talk about library stuff and have food and captive audiences. It's perfect. And something I think you just mentioned in that previous slide about steps to do. Some of us know about, do you know of libraries have been proactive in building advocacy and awareness about all of this before challenges come up? So it seems like something that, go out into community and community conversations. So don't just wait for something to happen. And then it suddenly blows up in the community. You as a library, be proactive and start having the discussions. Is that something that you've seen or heard of libraries doing? Oh yeah. There are so many that are very worried about what's coming. And they see it in the state next over. We're seeing like laws that are being written as we speak that are definitely a challenge to our freedom to read. And we'll encourage bookbans at a state level, which I don't think is a good idea at all. Yes, we need to be very proactive. And sometimes you may not think of everything, but I think it's always good to get out there and work together to try to prevent headaches later. It saves a lot of time. Yeah, let your community know what you're already doing. That you already know that this is an issue and that you are prepared. Absolutely. Let's see what we got here. All right, here's multiple questions here from this one person. With the anti-science perspective of some of these groups, are there books being challenged on climate science? Are the books also, are they also attacking some books on history? I think we know what you're doing. I mean, I've heard of people who thought that things in history didn't happen and that we didn't walk on the moon and that there's conspiracy theories. And I'd say that there are some things that it's good to have two points of view, but there are some things that are actually incorrect. And that you can say, this is a collection development issue that we do not put things in our library that are actually incorrect. And that if you have it in your policy, then you don't have as much of a fight as if you didn't. And yes, you are, you're absolutely right. There are, there will, if there's something that people can complain about, they will, but that is a big one. A medical, after like the pandemic, there was a lot of like vaccination and that kind of thing. If there's anything you can think of, people will complain about. Yeah, I think that's definitely, there's gonna be people that don't, if their point of view, they're something they think of that there's a conspiracy or whatever should be. Libraries are supposed to be impartial, supposed to be neutral to access. And they should have books on anything that anybody has written. But we don't have to. It's a huge thing. We weed out things that have become old outdated, not just like it's old as far as like physical condition because they're so used, but old as in, this information is no longer correct or this information should also never collect things that are incorrect to begin with, yes. Absolutely. And that's a good thing to think about too is what you have in your collection, and why do you have that in your collection? If you have things that are incorrect, what are you doing about it? So a good recommendation here, I'll send just comments that you're talking about sharing, possibly putting together a database and sharing what book challenges you've had and some in common that there is a library in Texas that has done this. Westlake School District, I don't know if I pronounced that right. They created a book challenge database on the school's website that includes books challenged, who made the challenge and the board's decision with each one, full transparency. And I went to it, it's great. It's just a list, a huge list, but it's got, yeah, you can see exactly what the decision was, what the book was and everything that happened with it. So that's a great resource or a great example. That's what I was trying to think of the word. Wonderful, I'm gonna go play with that one. I remember that, I remember reading that. That's E-A-N-E-S, E-E-E-A-N-E-S Westlake School District. Oh, that's so great. And you have to look in here. And again, you don't have to reinvent the wheel and you can see what other libraries are going through and if they're having the challenges, you're probably gonna see them in similar titles. It's a lot of the same books over and over. So it's, you can see if you have them in your collection, that the weird part of me is almost like, oh, we don't have that one, I kind of want it now. That's becoming a side effect here. We were hearing about books that we didn't know that were out there because there's so many titles. I mean, it's just, but there's also, but there's a previous session today, we can't have every book in our library. That's why intro library loan exists and we love it, of course. Yes. But you'll find, learn some new titles that maybe you might want to share with, at least so that they know that it exists if you can't necessarily pursue your library. If your teens or adults, whoever is looking for a particular topic, hey, I know a book that exists, let me get it for you from another library. It'll be here in a couple of days. Well, and then that was the other thing that reminded me of is that some organizations are digitizing some of these banned books and putting them available in a mostly free way. They're donating it. That's the part of the Brooklyn Public Library. Great. Yes. Anyone in the country who's a teen can get access to their books online. You just submit an application, tell them why you want it and you have access to it. This is a workaround. So if things get really bad, librarians will come up with a way to make it a little bit better. I think we're gonna wrap up with this last question, which is, I don't know if I say it's loaded, but it's an enemy. How do you stay positive in the face of this terrifying force that is so detrimental to the work that we do? Because we love helping our students and our patrons and it's all about them. It's sometimes you, it's really easy to lose your way because you see all these negative things coming at you. But when you have a student come at you and say, this book, I know it was challenged, but it changed my life. I was so glad that we had it. Thank you for having it and thank you for standing up for me. It will make your heart just grow a hundred times and it is so worth it. So please do, you're gonna feel a little, oh, I was gonna say dissuaded and it's probably stronger than that, more. Overwhelmed. Overwhelmed is definitely very overwhelmed. Like, how can I do anything? What can I do? And part of it is to the people, if they are your actual, your own patrons not coming from outside of community, they're also your base as well. Oh, that's right. And they are coming to you and saying, I am concerned about this book. I don't like it. I don't want it to be here at all. And they're also one of your patrons. You want everybody to love the library and it's hurts when they don't. You can't make everyone happy. Well, that you're one of our patrons and you don't like that we offer this for someone else. I mean, it's like, what can I get for you though? Yeah. You know, it's like, don't make other people lose their, or a friend who said, don't yuck, they're young. You know, like, just we'll get the young for you. How about that? They can have their young and everyone's happy, right? Everyone can have something they like from the library and they don't like in the library. And that's okay. Don't use the stuff you don't like. Yeah, just don't use it. Don't read the stuff you don't like. How hard is that? But I think it's a good start. Yeah. And then just a last comment. Thank you for addressing this important issue. We're happy to do so. Happy to have Heather on here to give us some guidance or something that we are all having to deal with. I am so thrilled to get to talk to you about this. And I have up on the screen my email address. If you have other thoughts or questions or you just want the slides right away, send me a note and I'll send it to you. I will be sending this so we can post it on the site so you can play with all the links at your own will. And I am happy to help. Yeah, we will have all of this available. As I said, with the recordings and slides will be available but it will take me some time. So if any of you can't wait the week or so it takes me to do this, you're welcome to reach out to any of the presenters and they will be happy to send things to you ahead of time. Eventually I will have it all up on the site for anyone. Thank you, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Heather. Thank you everybody for all of your interaction for this session. Thank you, have a great rest of the day.