Columbia County Board of Commissioners heard from a citizen at the meeting on Tuesday, May 17 about concerns regarding where some books at the Columbia County Library are located.
Priscilla Bence spoke about protecting children from what she called propaganda that can be found in some books in the Columbia County Library. She claimed there are books that don’t show all the facts when it comes to certain topics. The books she is referencing she claims show “these families in these books with more fun, more affection, more creativity, more wealth, more inclusiveness, everything that your kid wants, the artwork is phenomenal,” but they don’t show all the facts.
“I have nothing against, I was a public health nurse for 20 of my 40 years as a nurse, I have nothing against teaching about transgenderism and their problems and the homosexual lifestyle,” Bence said. “Those are in plenty of books already. Non-fiction books, there’s some really good non-fiction books in the children’s section. Those topics are well covered without the propaganda.”
Bence then went on to state the books she was concerned about are usually recommended by the Rainbow Coalition of the American Library Association. She said every year the organization comes out with a list of book recommendations, and there are around 70 in the Columbia County Library.
“If you pull up LGBTQ+ on your Pine Catalogue search, you’ll get about 50 in the children’s and youth,” Bence said.
Bence said she, and several parents, don’t want to ban books, and she never recommended banning a book. Instead, what they want is for the books to be moved from the children section to the adult section.
“What we do want is the books to be placed under the protection of parents and guardians so that they can decided whether they want their child to have the books or not, and that’s putting them in the adult section,” Bence said. “Not in the children’s section, not in the youth section right next door, not even in the young adult section downstairs because that place is frequented by young teenagers. I’ve watched it. It’s not young adults. So, we need these books in the adult section.”
Bence also spoke about the argument that they want to infringe on constitutional rights.
“Children under 18 are not under the constitution. They’re under our responsibility, under our authority as parents and guardians,” Bence said. “So, we’re not against the constitutional rights. We want the constitutional rights of parents and guardians to decide what their children should read.”
Bence added that the library they isn’t recommending putting tape on the back of books.
“That doesn’t provide any protection for children wandering in the children’s section. Whether you have one, two or five children, you don’t have time to read all the books your children are picking up to check out,” Bence said. “And you certainly don’t have time to see what the tape on the back of a binder means or what you should do about it.”
At the Columbia County Library Board meeting in April, the board discussed what to do with challenged books before deciding against marking them on the inside covers, which is what was proposed.
Marlena Bergeron, a library board member, was against putting stickers or markings on the inside of the challenged books, claiming it would be like “putting a scarlet letter on books.”
“I don’t think the attention it’s going to get will be positive,” Bergeron said at that meeting. “I don’t think the attention it’s going to get will be positive…I think there’s more collateral damage of it backfiring in unintended and unforeseen ways.”
There is currently a policy in place for what to do if a patron has an issue with the book. Mary Lin Maner, county library manager, said at the April meeting, when a person comes up to the circulation desk and states they don’t like a book, the person will get the manager who will tell them about the policy and form for reconsideration. If, after talking with the manger, the person would still like to continue with the reconsideration, the form will be emailed to them.
The policy about reconsideration for books can be found online at gchrl.org under the collection development policy.
Bence also said they do not recommend using author recommendation, which she said is a problem at the Columbia County Library. She stated authors are going to recommend their books for the lowest age possible.
“They’ll get bigger bang for their buck. They’ll have more impact if they have little kids reading these books,” Bence said. “We recommend not using the recommendations of the authors of these books, but instead using the common sense of the public, of concerned tax payers, citizens, parents.”
Bence then asked commissioners to listen to the concerns of what she called the silent majority. There were no comments from commissioners.
The Columbia County Library Board next meets on Tuesday, May 23 at 11:30 a.m. in the conference room at the library in Evans.
