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HomeMy WebLinkAbout(1991, 10/28) - O-6 - Amended0 -6 NEWPORT BEACH PUBLIC LIBRARY COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY It is the intent of the the Board of Library Trustees that the Newport Beach Public Library provide a variety of print and nonprint materials to meet the informational, educational and recreational needs of the entire community. The Library seeks to provide breadth and depth within the collection, various points of view, and differing formats. The Library endeavors to balance materials of permanent value with those of current interest. Materials are selected based on their content as a whole, not on selected excerpts. Race, nationality, or political, social, moral, or religious views of an author will not affect the selection of materials. Selection is based on merit of the work; value of the work within the collection; and the needs and interests of the community. Consideration is given to specific types of material; to materials for specific age groups; to materials for special interests of clientele; and to differing formats of materials. These selection criteria will apply equally to materials purchased and to those accepted as gifts. The selection of materials is made by Library staff. Patrons making requests that items be added to the permanent collection will be referred to the "Request for Book Purchase Form." Suggestions from Library patrons are encouraged and receive serious consideration. Many items which are not in the collection are available to library patrons, without charge, through established interlibrary loan practices. Concurrently, the Library's participation in universal borrowing, established by the California Library Services Act, Article 4, Section 18731, provides Newport Beach Public Library patrons direct access to materials housed in other participating public libraries in Orange County and throughout the State of California. The Library believes that the use of Library materials is an individual and private matter. All patrons are free to select or reject materials for themselves; they may not restrict the freedom of others to read or inquire. Parents have the primary responsibility to guide and direct the use of Library materials by their own minor children. In support of the above principles, the Library incorporates the Library Bill of Rights and the "Freedom to Read" statement, as adopted by the American Library Association Council on January 23, 1980 and January 28, 1972, respectively, as Attachment I and Attachment II to the Collection Development Policy. Attachments I & II - Collection Development Policy) Adopted - October 22, 1990 Amended - October 28, 1991 0 -6 • NEWPORT BEACH PUBLIC LIBRARY COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY - Page 2 Attachment I) 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. 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment. 4. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgement of free expression and free access to ideas. 5. A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views. 6. 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 27, 1967, and January 23, 1980 by the ALA Council. NEWPORT BEACH PUBLIC LIBRARY COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY - Page 3 0 -6 Attachment II) 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 books from sale, to censor textbooks, to label controversial" books, 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 avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as citizens devoted to the use of books and as libarians and publishers responsible for disseminating them, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read. We are deeply concerned about these attempts at suppression. Most such attempts rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary citizen, by exercising his critical judgment, will accept the good and reject the bad. The censors, public and private, assume that they should determine what is good and what is bad for their fellow- citizens. We trust Americans to recognize propaganda, and to reject it. We do not believe they need the help of censors to assist them in this task. 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. We are aware, of course, that books are not alone in being subjected to efforts at suppression. We are aware that these efforts are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought against education, the press, films, radio, and television. 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. Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of uneasy change and pervading fear. Especially when so many of our apprehensions are directed against an ideology, the expression of a dissident idea becomes a thing feared in itself, and we tend to move against it as against a hostile deed, with suppression. 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 stress. Now, as always in our history, books are among our greatest instruments of freedom. They are almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience They are the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth. They are essential to the extended discussion which 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 towards 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, 0 -6 • NEWPORT BEACH PUBLIC LIBARY COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY - Page 4 Attachment II (Contd.) 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 men will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the responsibilities that accompany these rights. We therefore, affirm these propositions: It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those which are unorthodox or unpopular with the majority. Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until his idea is refined and tested. Totalitarian systems attempt to maintain themselves in power by the ruthless suppression of any concept which 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 a 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 whey we believe it. Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea or presentation contained in the books 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 books 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 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 man can read should be confined to what another one thinks proper. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to determine the acceptability of a book on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author. A book should be judged as a book. 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 men can flourish which draws up lists of writers to whom it will not listen, whatever they may have to say. 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 expressions. • 0 -6 NEWPORT BEACH PUBLIC LIBRARY COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY - Page 5 Attachment II (Contd.) To some, much of modern literature 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 taste differs, and taste cannot be legislated; nor can machinery be devised which will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept with any book the prejudgment of a label characterizing the book or author as subversive or dangerous. The idea of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to determine by authority what is good or bad for the citizen. It presupposes that each individual must be directed in making up his mind about the ideas he examines. 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. 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 each individual is free to determine for himself what he wishes 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. 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 thou &ht and expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, bookmen 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 expended on the trivial; it is frustrated when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for his 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 their freedom and integrity, and the enlargement of their service to society, requires of all bookmen the utmost of their faculties, and deserves of all citizens the fullest of their issupport. 0 -6 • NEWPORT BEACH PUBLIC LIBRARY COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY - Page 6 Attachment II (Contd.) We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations. We here stake out a lofty claim for the value of books. We do so because we believe that they are good, 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 it ours. This statement was originally issued in May 1953 by the Westchester Conference of the American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which in 1970 consolidated with the American Educational Puiblishers Institute to become the Association of American Publishers. Adopted June 25, 1953, and Revised January 28, 1972 by the ALA Council.