Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Book Challenge Gone Wrong?

"YA Authors Rally behind Fired Librarian" is a "talkback article" on The School Library Journal website that seems to show an example of a book challenge gone wrong or is it? We'll never really know what happened, but I sure would hate to be in that position.

The fiasco in this article surely exemplifies why we need accurate, effective Board policies on challenged materials as well as teacher librarians, media clerks, and media techs that know the policy and how to implement it and inform their school staff of the policy.

My first year in the district, I attended a library conference workshop where we role played different book challenge scenarios. At the time it felt sort of silly. Reasonable folks should be able to handle these issues in reasonable ways. But what this article points out is that emotion gets in the way of reason and without a firm grasp of the policy and how to implement it, disaster can strike.

I am so pleased that our Teacher Librarians proactively took on the task of updating our library policies this year (about six months before the superintendent requested that all policies be reviewed and updated). They did an excellent job and the review of these policies at all school levels with other media staff was well reviewed also. I wonder if perhaps though we don't all need to do a little "silly" theater work now to be proactively prepared to implement this policy if it ever becomes necessary?

So much that needs to be done, so little time.

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