Final skirmish at hand in Salem Library “Battle of the Books”

Hines Brian April 20, 2019No Comments

Back in November 2018 Jim Scheppke issued a battle cry to book lovers: the decimation of the Salem Public Library's print collection must be met with fierce resistance.

See here, here, and here for my blog post reports about the first stages of the war against Library Director Sarah Strahl's efforts to implement what later became known as the Big Weed.

Since, I've followed the exploits of Scheppke and his band of outraged library users with much admiration.

They've been both relentless and reasonable in their efforts to understand why Strahl and her compliant Library Advisory Board feel it's OK to markedly reduce the number of books — which, according to Scheppke's seemingly solid research, already is quite a bit less than what a city of Salem's size should have in its library.

My impression is that Strahl and Co. have been unwilling to engage with critics of her book retention policies in any substantive manner. This seems decidedly at odds with how a supposedly fact-based librarian should operate.

Next Monday, April 22, the City Council will be discussing the library's Collection Development Policy, a more genteel term for the Big Weed.

No, wait… I misspoke.

Actually the City Council agenda item doesn't say there will be a discussion of the highly controversial Collection Development Policy. Instead, members of the City Council are supposed to be treated to an informational report of what's been going on.

Entirely appropriately, Scheppke is calling out Norm Wright, the Community Development Director who oversees the library, for Wright's attempt to sideline the City Council's legal responsibility to determine how the library operates.

Today Scheppke sent out this email:

Dear Library Supporters:

I thought you might be interested in my correspondence with the head of the Community Development Department (the City Librarian’s boss). He earlier indicated to me that the resumption of the Big Weed would serve as a recommendation to the Council. By making it an “information only” item on the Council agenda, he is not following through on that commitment.

Jim

Hey, of course us Library Supporters are interested in the correspondence.

On March 6, Scheppke wrote this to Wright:

Hi Norm:

I am sorry to hear that the motion passed by the LAB at their last meeting is being interpreted as sanctioning the resumption of the book removal project. In my opinion this is not consistent with the Salem Revised Code.

According to the Salem Revision Code the LAB can only make recommendations to Council on library policy matters. So when the LAB approved a motion to resume implementation of the Collection Development Policy, that must be interpreted as a recommendation to the Council according to SRC 18.050(a).

I believe proper course of action would be to take the recommendation of the LAB to the Council on April 8th for Council action to accept the recommendation or to do otherwise.

I hope you will reconsider this in light of my comments. I will be in town on April 8th and would look forward to speaking to the Council about this.

Thanks for sharing this information with me,

Jim

Also on March 6, Wright responded to Scheppke:

Sorry, I could have been more precise with my words. We are in agreement. The LAB motion was indeed to *recommend* resuming the implementation. I could have written that fully in my email instead of just writing "the LAB motion".

Council can certainly decide to accept it or provide a different policy direction. The report will be written for that very purpose.

Hope that helps.

But today Scheppke said this:

Norm: I am sorry to see in the Council agenda for Monday night that what you told me below is not what is happening. The LAB recommendation is “information only.” This is wrong. The LAB Bylaws are clear:

I hope you will see that this mistake is corrected and that the LAB recommendation is moved to Action Items, where it rightfully belongs.

Jim

Hopefully this will occur at next Monday's City Council meeting. It's ridiculous that City staff are trying to get away with making this an Informational Report agenda item.

There needs to be extensive discussion of what Scheppke learned about through public record requests made to the City of Salem: 3,334 books have been removed from the library so far, with many more to come if the Big Weed isn't stopped. A few days ago he emailed me this:

Brian:

Here is a list of 3,334 books that were removed from our library collection in the Big Weed, before it was suspended. I got this information in three separate public records requests.

Download Books Removed from SPL

The City Council will decide whether the Big Weed should be resumed or not next Monday night. The Library Advisory Board is recommending it be resumed. A number of us are going to testify. I am trying to get two former librarians who recently quit to testify, but they are still deciding. It’s not really in the nature of most librarians to do that (yes, the stereotype is mostly true).

The list I made shows the books that are recommended for any public library in the Wilson guide Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction. There are quite a few of them. They are all gone now.

I think a lot of the books on the list were probably sold for $1.25 and less at the recent Friends book sale. If the Big Weed were to resume many, many thousands more would be removed, I’m sure. They were just getting started when the project was suspended.

You’ll see from the list that the poetry collection and the play collection got hit pretty hard. Philosophy too, though they did not have that much to begin with. Lots of books on atheism are gone.

Some of the books, but not many, were duplicates so there is still one on the shelf. You can’t assume these were the last copies, and many are owned by other libraries in CCRLS.