On Wednesday, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey sent an open letter to Alabama Public Library Service director Nancy Pack. Ivey had previously sent a letter to Pack expressing her growing concern about the libraries and the state’s affiliation with the ultra-liberal American Library Association.
Pack, in her response, defended the Alabama Libraries Association.
Ivey made it clear in Wednesday’s letter that she was displeased.
“I still lack confidence that our libraries are most effectively fulfilling their mission,” Ivey said. “In my previous letter to you, I described the core problem as the exposure of children and youth to inappropriate materials without adequate means of parental supervision. Unfortunately, your response does not persuade me that Alabama libraries have policies in place to strike the right balance in responding to this problem.”
Pack said it is the parent’s responsibility to protect children from harmful material, not the libraries.
“Parents should be confident that the materials available in children’s sections are, in fact, suitable for children. And children should have the freedom to wander freely in a children’s section without being exposed to harmful materials,” Ivey wrote.
Libraries have become front and center in the ongoing culture wars.
As one former librarian explained to Alabama Today, a large part of a librarian’s work is “managing and building their collections.” Children’s books about children and alternative lifestyles, gender transitioning, and the LGBTQ+ experience did not just suddenly appear on the shelves at a neighborhood public library. Libraries have fixed budgets and only so much money to buy new books and shelf space to store books. If those books are on the shelves in the library, in most cases, it was the librarian who made the decision that the library needs LGBTQ+ books geared to kids.
As Pack said in a recent appearance on Capital Journal, children living in an LGBTQ+ home where there are two mommies or two daddies want to be able to go to the library and find books with families like theirs.
Social conservatives argue that LGBTQ+ books should be in an LGBTQ+ section, if present at all. The librarians say that that is censorship. Conservatives, on the other hand, contend that the local library is an arm of city government and that the city governments should have some say on the content that is on the shelves in the city library and are thus putting pressure on city mayors and councils to get their libraries more appropriate for children.
Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl, who also serves on the state’s library board, has suggested that there are ways that the state Legislature could step in to this situation.
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