Stuck In Neutrality
Speaking of collection stuff, [chuckles], when we talk about resources that are available, again, the Library Bill of Rights has lots of things about spread and materials and information for all points of view on issues current and historical, and enlightening the people that the library serves. It's very good, very high-concept language sometimes. [Library Bill of Rights, I and II] When we start thinking about matters of politics, at least here in Washington State, the Public Disclosure Commission gets involved as well, and has promulgated an interpretation that basically says that public facilities may not be used to "support or oppose a candidate or ballot proposition."
In addition to those ethical requirements, there are situations in which public information might very well look like it's partisan information, through no fault of anybody but the candidates themselves and their published statements or written things. But the Library Bill of Rights and the PDC both seem to combine with an interpretation that says, "No, libraries, you should stay out of anything political. You're not allowed to have an opinion on anything, or even something that has a whiff of an opinion about something."
- Is there a way that we can thread the needle on making sure that we keep our legal requirements in place, or are libraries stuck in neutrality without the ability to shift into drive and provide that information without worrying that their organization is going to get slapped with complaint, a fine from the Public Disclosure Commission, or worse, a lawsuit from somebody about having waded into politics in some manner?
[Robin:] I was just going to say, we're political, but not partisan. And if you have information across the board, I mean, you can't really not--I'm trying to think of a way for a library to not have political information.
[Gavin:] You really literally stole the words out of my mouth.
[Robin:] Everything is political.
[Gavin:] I was gonna say exactly that.
[Robin:] Even, you know, gosh, once upon a time, Teletubbies were political. Literally everything.
[Gavin:] Some people's existence is political,
[Robin:] Exactly.
[Gavin:] and we provide data. We provide facts. And that's political.
[Robin:] Yes.
[Gavin:] So, as you put it, Robin, we are political, we just cannot be partisan. We cannot say, "We love the Democrats and hate the Republicans!" "We love the Republicans, but hate the Democrats!" We can't do that. We can provide data and information, and if one party happens to not like data and information, that's kind of on them, not on us.
[Robin:] And, you know, every election cycle, there are a ton of political books about whoever is currently in power and why they're terrible, or how we're gonna get back to them, or whatever. There's just a ton. I swear, at every library I've worked at, someone has complained, "I can't believe you have this book!" or "Why don't you have more of this book?" or, and this is where your policies also help. If you have a policy that "we buy an extra copy after there are five holds," then, if you have 20 holds, you should have four copies. And if you don't have four copies of this book, but you have of this book, that's where you're going to run into trouble.
[Gavin:] Yes.
[Robin;] Making sure that you are doing things equitably, even though we don't like that word right now, [laughs]
[Gavin:] Oh, we like that word.
[Robin:] We like that word.
Making sure that you do that is what's going to save you from these accusations.
[Gavin:] Yes.
I'll give a very concrete example, actually. During October 2024, in my library, I set up, because I have, at the high school level, some students were actually able to vote last election. Everyone was interested in it. And my book display was on the election. And so I had Kamala Harris's book, I had JD Vance's book, I had books about the various topics. I did not have a book by Trump. Why did I not have a book by Trump? Well, "The Art of the Deal" was too old, by the collection development policy. I couldn't include it there. A lot of his more recent books had enough factual...inaccuracies, I will say, that it still did not fit within the collection development policy. So I can point to my collection development policy, had I had a complaint, and say, "Well, unfortunately, for these reasons, I was not able to put a book by Donald Trump in the library on this display." By having that policy, that was able to direct me--and I tried! I did try! I looked really hard to find a book by Trump that could fit within that policy, and it just, it did not exist.
[Robin:] [laughing]
[Gavin:] Likewise, there wasn't a book by Governor Walz to put on the shelf, to go against the fact that I had one by JD Vance. That policy does help guide and protect you.
[Alex:] All right. That's...that's helpful, at least. Since we're talking to librarians, we know that we have policies, and that seemingly arbitrary actions rarely are, in fact, arbitrary actions, just that the policies and the decisions that are made behind them may not always be obvious to the observer.
[Robin:] I would say most times they're not.
[Gavin:] Yeah.
[Robin:] Most times people aren't in the weeds, and that could be staff or customers. They're not in the weeds of the decisions. We might have our collection development policy on the webpage, and that is, you know, a page or two or three. The procedures of how we do it, I'm sure we don't have on our website our holds ratio, for instance. So people won't understand why we might have more copies of this and not this. Or why this might be a Lucky Day title and you see it everywhere, and this isn't. It's because of how many holds it has. If that is the case, and I don't blame people for asking, but we need to be better about making sure that people who are on the front lines have that information, so that when someone does ask, and they come to you, thinking they've caught you in some sort of malfeasance because you have more of this than that, then you say, "No. This is the reason why." Again, it's not personal. You didn't make the rules. These are the reasons, it's numbers-based, not partisan-based.
[Gavin:] Yes.
[Alex:] I can imagine that comes up in some very interesting situations, where material that is extremely popular, but potentially grossly factually inaccurate, ends up in a ssituation asking "Which principle do we use here? Do we go 'It's popular, and therefore we should buy it,' or 'It's inaccurate, and therefore we shouldn't?' " The answer is almost certainly, "What does your collection development policy say? Follow that, and it will guide you in the way that you are meant to go."
[Gavin:] Yes.
[Alex:] Okay. This has been a fascinating conversation so far about services and other things, especially for people who may or may not get to see behind the curtain all that much about the inner workings of libraries and library decisions.