u/ChaosinWonderland

Hi everyone!

Thanks for your thoughts and advice on my last post.

I do have a follow up question after some extra information that was shared with me tonight:

It turns out that the minor who checked out the adult manhwa that upset their parent wasn't just browsing and found the book and checked it out; it was actually a series that the minor had submitted a patron request on, which our previous Director fulfilled.

My interim Director is having Big Feelings about this particular detail. They're worried that this can be equated to distributing pornography to a minor (because it was a specific request rather than something the minor just found on a shelf) and fears legal repercussions, and are worried about the optics of an adult providing a minor with materials that on the surface looks like its for kids (having babies on the cover) but actually contains explicit content even though it was the minor who asked for it, because to some people that could look like grooming.

I'm trying to help my interim Director navigate all of this. I can understand their feelings - I would feel uncomfortable if a minor had asked me to order this item, and uncomfortable with parents being upset with me about it, but I would assume that according to the ALA and the guidelines for ratings and labels here that not following through with a patron's request based solely on the age of the requester would be a violation of their library bill of rights/freedom to read?

I think part of my interim Director's problem (and part of their personal revulsion to the whole situation) is the person who ordered the material; we both have observed situations where the person who ordered our books was doing readers advisory with the teens and when the teens requested "spicy books" they took a really intense delight in directing them to and then discussing the material with them. Like, there was a lot of glee when teens said they wanted to read books that had full nudity and sexual situations. I know that personally never sat right with me. I feel like it's one thing to just neutrally process and distribute a patron's request, but whole other thing to get really excited and happy to talk about "spicy" material with a teen as an adult. I'm worried that this might be coloring my interim Director's feelings about the entire situation and may influence how they want to deal with these kinds of materials in general.

Any advice or links or documents that address this aspect of things (the minor requesting explicit materials and an adult fulfilling the request and providing them) that I could share with my interim Director?

Hi everyone,

My library is in-between Directors at the moment. Most of our collection was selected and purchased by our former Director. Our philosophy at our library is that anyone at any age can check out any material - staff can't decide what is appropriate for whom - that's a parent's responsibility to discuss with their kids and if they want to have control over what their kids check out they've got to come to the library with them. Staff shouldn't have any say. Our collection development policy is meant to back-up this philosophy and is meant to protect materials that are frequently challenged, such as materials by and about the queer community, people of color, folks of different religions, etc. It's guided by the Library Bill of Rights, ALA's Freedom to Read Statement and the Access to Library Resources and Services for Minors: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights document.

Quoted from our Collection Development Policy:

"The Library encourages parental participation in materials access for their children.

  * Individuals are free to select or reject materials for themselves or their minor children but may not restrict the freedom of others to use or access materials or information. Parents and guardians are responsible for guiding and directing the reading, listening and viewing choices of their minor children. The Library does not stand *in loco parentis* (in the place of a parent)."

Our policy also outlines a way to take input from the community on materials; we have a request for reconsideration form and clear instructions and guidelines such as the requirement to have an active library card, a no-organizations request rule, and clear materials selection criteria.

In the time I've worked at the library, we've never had anyone submit a request or challenge a material in any serious way.

Until this week.

Our previous Director was not afraid to buy graphic novels that were sexually explicit - in fact I kind of worried that the proportion of sexually explicit graphic novels to any other graphic novel was dramatically unbalanced especially considering that our main readership skewed more into pre-teen aged readers who weren't quite ready for that level of "spicy." I think about 2/3 of our adult graphic novel collection is "spicy" while the rest is more along the lines of My Hero Academia and Chainsaw Man, etc. Our children's and middle school graphic novels are housed in our children's room.

I don't have all the pieces of the story since I'm not there this week but here's what I have pieced together with conversations with other staff:

1. This week I guess a parent came in because their pre-teen had checked out the manhwa Love Is An Illusion #7 by Fargo and took it with them to read during breaks throughout state testing.

2. The parent became aware of it's mature and sexually explicit material - full nudity, etc.

3. The parent became concerned that it could have gotten their child in trouble while at state testing - something about police potentially getting involved because it's "pornographic" in a situation with minors?

4. The parent is concerned about having the manhwa in the library unlabeled and would like to have a discussion about it and possibly an official request for reconsideration form.

Our interim Director and I both agree that the book shouldn't be removed from the library - it has decent circulation numbers and is physically in decent condition. But, we understand where this parent is coming from, especially because the cover for #7 has toddlers babies that are very innocent looking and the transition from the cover to the mature content is dramatic.

We're wondering if there's any kind of labeling or rating system that others use that would allow parents to more easily judge content maturity, and advise readers of content? Sort of like the fanfiction site Archive of Our Own which has tags for the types of content within stories and a rating system that allows readers to opt-into or out of certain types of things. Would this be a good middle ground? Are there any downsides to inputting a trigger/maturity labeling system, other than increased staff time? Are there other, better solutions? Like I said we don't want to exclude content - just label it so that folks are more aware of what they're checking out or to help parents know what their kids are checking out so that they can have that discussion with their kids.

Thoughts?