Mae S. Bruce Library

Materials Selection Policy

 

Mission Statement

 The mission of the Library is to provide the means by which people of all ages,

interests, and circumstances may avail themselves of the recorded wisdom, experiences, and ideas of others.  

 

In support of this mission, materials are assembled, organized, and made accessible to all: opportunities for personal, educational, cultural, and recreational enrichment are offered; collections, services, and programs are developed to respond to individual and community needs; a knowledgeable staff is employed to facilitate and enhance the use of library resources.  By committing themselves to excellence in all facets of the library’s service and operation, the Library Advisory Board, management, and staff of the library reaffirm the democratic ideals upon which the American public library is founded.

 The Mae S. Bruce Library provides materials and services to support the informational and educational needs of the residents of Santa Fe .  Its objectives include to provide a varied selection of books and materials; to provide assistance in the use of these materials; and to provide service for people in their search for greater understanding and knowledge, in acquiring reliable information, and in the exploration of a more secure and creative pattern for living.

 Knowledge of the community is a vital ingredient in the responsible selection of library materials.  Selection will take into account residents’ interests, abilities, and the demographic and geographic make-up of the community. 

 Selection and purchase of library materials rests with the library director who may delegate some responsibilities to other staff members.  Staff will adhere to accepted professional practices when making selection decisions.  The recreational, educational, and informational needs of the community will be considered in selecting materials.

 Before the beginning of each budget year, the director will determine how limited funds will be allocated among the major collection subdivisions.  Circulation statistics will be maintained to assist in decision making.  Average cost per item, reviews in library and publishing journals, and patron recommendations will also be considered when allocating funds.

 Materials will be selected based on positive reviews in professional journals or actual examination and evaluation of materials.  Instead of reviews, popular demand (bestsellers, school bibliographies, local interest) may be used as the criterion for selection of materials.  Items that must be updated every year may be placed on standing order list to ensure timely delivery.  Suggestions from the community for items to be considered for purchase are strongly encouraged, but materials must meet selection criteria.  

 The Mae S. Bruce Library does not attempt to acquire textbooks that support local curricula, but may acquire textbooks for general use by the public.  Multiple copies of popular books (e.g., bestsellers, resume guides, tax preparation) may be purchased to meet demand.  Paperback books will be purchased when available to meet short-term demand.  The Library will attempt to have information available in a variety of formats, both print and non-print, when available and practical.  Generally, only one copy of materials in other formats (video, compact disk, cassette, computer programs) will be purchased unless long-term high demand is anticipated.  Video and audio recordings will be selected for potential long-term use to meet general interests.  Regardless of an item’s popularity, the Library may choose not to select it, because its format is not durable enough (e.g., pop-up books, comic books) to withstand reasonable library use, because it is inappropriate for library use (for example, consumable workbooks), or it would require excessive staff time to maintain. Non-selected items may be available through Interlibrary Loan services. (See Reference Policy –Scope of Reference Service, Section F-9: Interlibrary Loan (ILL.)

Basic to the Library’s Materials Selection Policy is the Library Bill of Rights and the Freedom to Read Statement (see attached). 

 Objections to items in the collection should be made in writing to the Library director.  (See also the “Request for Reconsideration of Materials” policy.)  Materials that no longer meet the needs of the community and no longer support the library’s collection will be withdrawn and disposed of in accordance with the Library’s “Deselection of Materials Policy.”

     

Attachments:  “A”  -  Library Bill of Rights

                         “ B” -  The Freedom to Read

 

Reviewed and Approved by the Library Advisory Board – July 7, 2010

Approved by the Santa Fe City Council – August 12, 2010

 

Attachment A

 

Library Bill of Rights

 

The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for

information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide

their services.

I.   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.

 II.  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.

 III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of

     their responsibility to provide information and

      enlightenment.

 IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups

     concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and

     free access to ideas.

 V.  A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or

     abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.

 VI. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms

     available to the public they serve should make such facilities

     available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or

     affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.

 Adopted June 18, 1948 .

Amended February 2, 1961 ; June 28, 1967 ; and January 23, 1980 ,

inclusion of “age” reaffirmed January 23, 1996 ,

by the ALA Council.

 

 Attachment B

 

THE FREEDOM TO READ

 

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:

 1. 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.

 2. 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.

     3. 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.

 4. 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.

 5. 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.

 6. 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.

 7. 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.

 

 This statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester Conference of the American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which in 1970 consolidated with the American Educational Publishers Institute to become the Association of American Publishers.

 Adopted June 25, 1953 ; revised January 28, 1972 , January 16, 1991 , July 12, 2000 , June 30, 2004 , by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee.

 

A Joint Statement by:

 American Library Association

Association of American Publishers

 Subsequently endorsed by:

 American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression

The Association of American University Presses, Inc.

The Children’s Book Council

Freedom to Read Foundation

National Association of College Stores

National Coalition Against Censorship

National Council of Teachers of English

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression