Progress made in effort to develop Marshall Public Library materials selection policy

Marshall Public Library board members and staff met again in the library meeting room on Nov. 9, to discuss ideas about a new material selection policy.

Eight of the nine committee member were on hand, and a small number of Marshall citizens sat in on the meeting.

The committee was established to form a "material selection policy." The new policy would be used as a guideline for selecting materials to be purchased for inclusion in the library's collection.

The formation of the policy comes as a result of a request by Marshall resident Louise Mills to remove two graphic novels from the shelves.

The novels, "Fun Home" by Alison Bechdel and "Blankets" by Craig Thompson, were deemed offensive by Mills and other members of the community who aired their views at a public hearing on Oct. 4.

The committee had agreed to read the material selection policies of a number of libraries from around the state and the country and to take note of things in them that could be included in the new policy at the Marshall library.

The board discussed a large number of ideas and pulled quotes from a variety of the other library's policies.

Some of the ideas discussed included wording to outline the responsibilities of the library, tools that should be used for selection, as well as the criteria used for the selection of library materials.

All of the ideas were written down and discussed. A task force made up of three of the committee members, Anita Wright, Jeanne Simonton and Priscilla McReynolds, was formed during the meeting. The task force will meet and condense the ideas discussed into a written document to bring back to the assembled committee to again discuss.

"We (the task force) will not add or subtract from the ideas," Wright said. "We will take all of the ideas and put them in document form to take to the committee."

Wright was encouraged with the progress made during the meeting.

"We're starting to get somewhere," Wright said. "I was really pleased with the ideas."

The committee will meet again on Thursday, Nov. 16, at 5 p.m., in the library meeting room, where there will be more discussion. The meetings are open to the public.

Contact Zach Sims at marshallbusiness@socket.net