Collection Management Policy
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REDDICK PUBLIC LIBRARY DISTRICT
COLLECTION MANAGEMENT POLICY
Purpose
Updated: 6.8.2026
The purpose of Reddick Public Library District’s Collection Management Policy is to guide library staff in their assigned areas of collection management to continually reflect the district by meeting their literacy, cultural, and community needs and to inform the public of the principles which govern the management of the library’s collection.
The library endeavors to maintain a diverse collection in a variety of formats that supports accessibility, reading/cognition levels and varied viewpoints, represents a wide array of cultures and experiences, and allows for all members of the district to feel included and represented.
Authority
The responsibility for the policy governing the management of the library’s collections rests with the Board of Trustees. Responsibility for managing the collections is delegated to the Director and their designees.
Selection Criteria
Library staff use their professional judgement and expertise to make thoughtful selection decisions.
Selection criteria for both physical and digital materials include:
1. Broad appeal or high demand.
2. Inclusive representation of experiences and diverse viewpoints to reflect community.
3. Quality based on reviews, critical attention, and media coverage from professionally trusted sources.
4. Estimated circulation life or longevity of item.
5. Review of similar topic/item circulation statistics.
- Suitability for circulation by a public library.
- Accuracy of information and relationships to the existing collection.
- Ease of accessibility, ease of usage, and quality of item.
- Availability from a reputable publisher at a fiscally responsible cost per usage.
- Quality of the content, editing, and presentation.
- Supporting library programs, initiatives, and staff training.
- Ability to obtain the material from other libraries via consortia or shared use agreements.
- Specific local interest, including local history and works by local creators that fit the above criteria.
Additional Selection Criteria Notes:
1. Selection of materials is made on the basis of the values and interests of all the people in the community. No material will be excluded because of the race, nationality, religion, sexuality, gender, political, or social views of the author.
2. Because it is impossible for selectors to examine all items being considered for purchase, they depend on reliable selection aids from professionally trusted sources.
3. Because the library serves a public that includes a wide range of ages, educational backgrounds, and reading skills, it will seek to select materials of varying complexity.
4. No titles are excluded from the collection solely because the frankness of presentation might be offensive to some nor because the material might not be suitable for all levels.
5. High interest materials of questionable long-term value may be included in the collection and may be withdrawn once they have served their purpose. Literary merit is not a necessary criterion for high interest materials.
Purchase Recommendations
Any member of the staff or tax-paying citizen may recommend titles for consideration. Recommendations for materials from tax-paying citizens of the community is encouraged. Individuals can complete a Purchase Request form at a service desk. All requests are given consideration, and patrons will be informed of the decision.
Interlibrary loan may be utilized for items that do not meet the criteria for purchase or are unavailable to purchase.
Collection Maintenance
All materials are periodically evaluated by staff to ensure they are still useful, accurate, wanted, and needed by the public using accepted professional practices as described in the CREW Manual. A copy of the CREW Manual is kept for review in the Director’s Office for any individual who requests it.
Items may be withdrawn due to:
1. Low circulation/usage.
2. Space considerations.
3. Superseded editions or formats.
4. Outdated or inaccurate information.
5. Poor condition of material that is beyond repair.
Disposition of all library materials will be at the discretion of the Director or their designee.
Intellectual Freedom
The library is committed to the democratic principles expressed in the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, and the Freedom to Read and Freedom to View statements. The library has the responsibility to provide materials representing a wide range of ideas and opinions, including controversial, unpopular, and unorthodox viewpoints and expression. Inclusion of an item in the collection does not constitute endorsement of its content by the Library.
While individuals are free to reject titles of which they do not approve for themselves and their own children, they cannot restrict the freedom of others to choose what to read, hear, or view. The library purchases material for collections for all age groups and reading/cognition levels. However, there are no restrictions by the library on the borrowing, viewing, or accessing of library materials. Responsibility for materials accessed by children, teenagers, or vulnerable adults rests with their legal guardians and is not limited by the library.
The Library Board of Trustees defends the principle of Freedom to Read and declares that whenever censorship is involved, no material will be removed from the library except under the orders of a court of competent jurisdiction. The principles on which this policy is based are expressed in the Library Bill of Rights, adopted by the American Library Association (ALA), and as amended by the ALA Council, and the following interpretations by the ALA Council: Challenged Materials, Evaluating Library Collections, Exhibit Spaces and Meeting Rooms, Expurgation of Library Materials, Free Access to Libraries for Minors, Restricted Access to Library Materials, and Statement on Labeling, copies of which are attached hereto and incorporated herein.
The Library Board of Trustees adopts and declares that it will adhere to and support:
a. The Library Bill of Rights adopted by the American Library Association.
b. The Freedom to Read statement adopted by the American Library Association.
c. The Freedom to View statement adopted by the American Library Association.
(These documents are appended to this policy.)
Requests for Reconsideration of Materials
The library welcomes opinions regarding materials purchased. Individuals with concerns about specific library materials will be referred to the Director for an informal discussion. It is the responsibility of the Director to attempt to clarify any questions regarding the inclusion of the materials. The individual will be provided with a copy of the Collection Management Policy of the Reddick Library.
If a tax-paying individual decides their concerns have not been addressed, the individual may complete a copy of the Citizen’s Request for Reconsideration of Materials form (appended to this policy) and return it to the Director. Upon form receipt, the Director will review the form and make an appointment with the patron for a consultation regarding the material. Should the appointment not bring a satisfactory result by the individual, the Director will bring the matter to the attention of the Library Board of Trustees for their consideration.
Only tax-paying individuals who have followed these above steps will have their reconsideration requests presented to the Library Board.
Review of Policy
Because the needs of the community change, the Collection Management Policy is revised as needed and/or reviewed by the Board of Trustees at least every three years.
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION SUPPORTED DOCUMENTS
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S LIBRARY BILL OF RIGHTS
Last updated by the American Library Association in January 2019
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 abridgment 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.
7. All people, regardless of origin, age, background, or views, possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use. Libraries should advocate for, educate about, and protect people’s privacy, safeguarding all library use data, including personally identifiable information.
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S FREEDOM TO READ STATEMENT
Last updated by the American Library Association on June 30, 2004
The 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 based on 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 discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared. In these matters values differs, and values cannot be legislated; nor can machinery be devised which 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 concepts of politics or morality upon other members of a democratic society. Freedom is not 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.
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S FREEDOM TO VIEW STATEMENT
Last updated by the American Library Association on January 10, 1990
The freedom to view, along with the freedom to speak, to hear, and to read, is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In a free society, there is no place for censorship of any medium of expression. Therefore, these principles are affirmed:
1. To provide the broadest possible access to film, video, and other audiovisual materials because they are a means for the communication of ideas. Liberty of circulation is essential to insure the constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression.
2. To protect the confidentiality of all individuals and institutions using film, video, and other audiovisual materials.
3. To provide film, video, and other audiovisual materials which represent a diversity of views and expression. Selection of a work does not constitute or imply agreement with or approval of the content.
4. To provide a diversity of viewpoints without the constraint of labeling or prejudging a film, video, or other audiovisual materials based on the moral, religious, or political beliefs of the producer or filmmaker or based on controversial content.
5. To contest vigorously, by all lawful means, every encroachment upon the public's freedom to view.
This statement was originally drafted by the Freedom to View Committee of the American Film and Video Association (formerly the Educational Film Library Association) and was adopted by the AFVA Board of Directors in February 1979. This statement was updated and approved by the AFVA Board of Directors in 1989.
Reddick Public Library District
Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials
Requests for reconsideration of library materials may be filled out by Reddick Public Library District Tax Payers.
In order to fill out this form, please acknowledge you have first spoken with the Director about your reconsideration concerns.
o Yes, I am a Reddick Public Library District Tax Payer.
o Yes, I have spoken with the Director about my concerns on date: _______________
Full Name: ____________________________________ Date: _______________
Full Address: _______________________________________________________
Phone: ______________________ Email: ________________________________
Whom do you represent?
___Myself ___Organization (Please specify) ___Other (Please specify)
Material(s) on which you are commenting:
Title: ________________________________________________________________
Author/Director/Artist: __________________________________________________
Format: ________________________________________________________
Have you read Reddick Public Library District’s Collection Management Policy? YES NO
Did you read, hear, or view the entire work? YES NO
What brought this title to your attention?
Please list any reviews of this item you have read or heard.
What is your specific objection? Please cite specific examples.
Why should this item be reconsidered? Please be specific.
What are your specific recommendations to the library regarding this work?
_________________________________________________________________
Your Signature
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(OFFICE USE ONLY)
Board Meeting Date: Action Taken:
