Last March during a “Candidates Night” forum in my small New Hampshire town, I was criticized by an incumbent library trustee who was running for reelection. Although she was seeking to continue in her elected office, she illogically asserted that I had inappropriately “brought politics into the library trustee race and,” as she further declared, “there is no place for politics in any library.”
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She was specifically inflamed by a recently published letter-to-the-editor in which I endorsed her opponents and signed off using my state representative title, thus making my letter much too political for her.
In my letter, I wrote that the two candidates I supported “believe in protecting our children from the increasing amount of inappropriate material available both in print and online without sacrificing the intellectual freedom that has always characterized public libraries.” This statement certainly struck a chord with her because it clearly identified one of the main issues that has polarized the left and the right in the battle over our public libraries. Fighting this battle is indeed highly political despite attempts to deny this reality. Consequently, the role of library trustee has become increasingly political in our communities. No longer is it akin to being an officer of the town garden club as it may have been in years gone by. Citizens also need to realize that the Board of Library Trustees is not the same thing as the “Friends of the Library,” a group of volunteers that truly should support the library in an apolitical way.
In a perfect society, libraries would be neutral places and the boards overseeing them would be apolitical, but we live in a very imperfect world, and the political battle over our libraries only intensifies with the passage of time. In fighting this battle, it is important to understand who really wields the power in public libraries. It is NOT the director; in most states, it is the library trustees. These trustees have an underappreciated amount of power, usurping by far that of a library director. The way to remedy the woke hijacking of our libraries is to get more conservative trustees elected so that more boards can attain a conservative majority. This will immediately and effectively stop the drag queen story hours, the Pride Month displays, and the promotion of woke books in our public libraries.
While laws regarding the governance of public libraries differ somewhat from state to state, all states should be emphasizing the power of the people to run their own public libraries. The New Hampshire laws that I am familiar with exemplify this ideal. According to NH RSA 202-A:6, “The library trustees shall have the entire custody and management of the public library and of all the property of the town relating thereto.” That sounds like a lot of power, and it is. On one of the first slides displayed in its “Library Trustee Orientation,” the New Hampshire Library Trustees Association (NHLTA) cites RSA 202-A:6 as it asserts the political influence of library trustees and describes them as “powerful elected officials.”
Pursuant to state law, New Hampshire trustees “adopt bylaws, rules and regulations,” so they, not the director, have the authority to set all policies. These policies could relate to “collection development” and determine whether Gender Queer or Lawn Boy will be put on the shelf, or they could relate to prohibiting drag queen story time or any number of hot button issues. Trustees also “hold the purse strings” of the library since they are tasked with preparing an annual budget and authorizing all expenditures of public money. Perhaps, most essentially, the trustees make all personnel decisions, appointing a director and approving the hiring of all other library employees.
It is noteworthy that the main qualification for the position of library director in New Hampshire is “education of sufficient breadth and depth to give leadership in the use of books and related materials” (202-A:15). Nowhere does it say that the library director or any other library employee must have a master’s degree in library science (MLS), but this has come to be an expected attainment at least for the director. Trustees are therefore free to hire someone who does not possess this certificate of questionable value (more about that in a future article!). The director, who serves “as the administrative officer of the public library” (202-A:16), can recommend employees to the trustees, but it is the board that has the ultimate say over who gets hired.
Overall, library trustees wield a great deal of political power. Unfortunately, some voters are not aware of this, so they don’t consider the political affiliation of candidates when casting their ballots for these important elected offices in their town. They might as well be voting for the president of the Garden Club! The end result of this oversight is trustee boards that promote drag queen story hours, Pride Month displays, and collection development policies that embrace woke ideals. Worse yet, sometimes there is only one candidate running unopposed, so the voters have no choice. That is why it is so important to recruit candidates for these important offices or perhaps even decide to run yourself.
Once trustees are elected, they should not be subjected to the indoctrination provided by state library trustee associations which generally walk in lockstep with the ALA. Here in my home state, the New Hampshire Library Trustees Association held a conference last spring, the agenda of which speaks for itself. The keynote speech at the 2023 NHLTA Conference was “The First Amendment: Fighting Censorship through Library Advocacy” (a title that clearly reflects ALA’s current distorted agenda). The speech, not surprisingly, emphasized how content related to LGBTQIA+ issues and Critical Race Theory is inordinately being targeted for “challenges.”
After the keynote address, the attending library trustees could choose from a variety of break-out sessions and workshops. “Intellectual Freedom & Social Justice: Supporting All of Our Values” focused on the “core values of librarianship,” including additional ALA buzzwords such as diversity, intellectual freedom, and sustainability. If you felt the need to stay on the “social justice” track, you could also attend “How to Work with your Town Government, Boards, and Community to Promote DEI and Social Justice.”
If you still hadn’t gotten enough social justice at this conference, you could join representatives from a coalition of libraries by attending “Small Libraries Unite for Justice.” This program promoted “Courageous Community Conversations” (C3), described by the sponsoring libraries as “a series of events…created to bring people together in community and conversation about racial and gender justice.” Despite the obvious political nature of these topics, the promoters assert that “C3 is designed outside of political attitudes or bias” and is “geared toward all levels of understanding of race, gender, and trans identities.” Another break-out session that was offered had a similarly sounding title, “Courageous Conversations: Can We Talk About Race?” For some odd reason, the organizers of this conference for library trustees took advantage of this meeting of library trustees to celebrate woke librarians who they considered “courageous.”
No library conference would be complete without guidance on collection development. The NHLTA conference did not disappoint with the breakout session “Developing Collections, Preparing for Challenges” being offered with its requisite emphasis on “challenged” (a.k.a. inappropriate) books. One final program, “Conducting Diversity Audits for Small & Midsize Libraries,” sounded very similar to the online Library Journal course that I criticized in my July article, “Protesting Inclusive Collections.” There were a few other programs offered at the conference that seemed more traditional and less political such as ones on grant writing and running effective meetings, but the majority of breakout sessions had a political spin as detailed above, reflecting the reality that the elected position of library trustee is indeed political.
NHLTA’s ideological influence is not limited to its annual conference. Its quarterly newsletters reinforce its political agenda. The Summer 2023 edition promotes activism by asserting, “The past couple of years have been rough ones for libraries – book challenges, attacks on free speech and diversity have made advocating for libraries more important than ever.” Similarly, the Summer 2022 newsletter reports, “At their June board meeting, NHLTA’s Board of Directors voted unanimously to sign on in support of the American Library Association’s ‘United Against Book Bans’ initiative.” This article emphasizes the close relationship between NHLTA and ALA, a relationship that is likely similar nationwide with other state-level trustee associations. By the way, there is a national association that is actually a division of the American Library Association and is called United for Libraries Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends and Foundations. For the sake of length, I will not analyze its agenda here, but as you could see for yourself by visiting its website, it is predictable.
If we want to save our libraries, we need to grab the power back that has been taken by liberal trustees adhering to their woke agenda. We need to recruit, support, and endorse library trustee candidates who will oppose those who walk in lockstep with the American Library Association. My hope is that some readers of this article will even consider running for this crucial role themselves. The position of library trustee must be appreciated as the important political office that it has become because trustees have the power to transform our public libraries back into the beloved town institutions promoting true intellectual freedom that they were intended to be.
Previously published on Arlene Quaratiello’s Substack newsletter “No Shushing Now: Exposing Today’s Woke Libraries.”