COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY

Statement

The responsibility for selecting library materials rests with the Library Director who uses their professional judgment to ensure a balanced, relevant, and inclusive collection. Selection is guided by the principles of the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights and the Freedom to Read Statement.

The library aims to provide materials that inform, educate, entertain, and enrich the lives of community members. Materials are chosen to represent a wide range of interests, viewpoints, and experiences, reflecting the diversity of the community it serves.

Criteria for Selection

When evaluating materials for addition to the collection, the following criteria are considered:

  • Relevance to community needs and interests
    • Supports the informational, educational, cultural, and recreational needs of the community.
    • Reflects the diversity and demographics of the service area.
  • Accuracy and reliability
    • Presents information that is factual, current, and verifiable.
    • Created by reputable and knowledgeable sources.
  • Quality and significance
    • Demonstrates literary, artistic, or technical merit.
    • Contributes to a balanced and comprehensive collection.
  • Demand and popularity
    • Responds to library card holder requests and circulation trends.
    • Reflects local or national interest.
  • Author, publisher, or producer reputation
    • Recognized for expertise, credibility, or creative achievement.

 

  • Cost and format
    • Consideration of budget, durability, and ease of use.
    • Availability in appropriate formats (print, digital, audiovisual, etc.).
  • Availability
    • Can it be borrowed in a timely manner from another library

            Timeliness and permanence

    • Importance of the subject’s current relevance or enduring value.
  • Representation and inclusion
    • Encourages diversity of perspectives and voices.
    • Includes materials representing various cultures, lifestyles, and viewpoints, including those that may be controversial.
  • Condition and durability
    • For physical materials, the quality, binding, and expected lifespan are taken into account.
  • Gifts and Special Materials

 

·         The Director shall have the prerogative of refusing to accept any gift materials which he/she believes do not contribute to the purpose of the library. Movies with an R rating will not be accepted and added to the collection.   Once accepted, gifts become the property of the library and can be used or disposed of in any manner the Director chooses.

 

Collection Management

Purpose

Weeding, or the systematic removal of materials from the library collection, is an essential part of maintaining a relevant, accurate, and attractive collection that meets the needs of the community. Regular evaluation ensures that the library’s resources remain current, in good condition, and reflective of patron interests.

The same care, thought, and professional judgment used in selecting materials are also applied when withdrawing them.

 

Responsibility

The Library Director and designated staff/and or board members are responsible for evaluating and removing materials according to this policy. Final decisions regarding removal rest with the Library Director.

Criteria for Weeding

The following criteria are considered when evaluating items for retention or removal:

  • Physical Condition
    • Worn, damaged, or deteriorated materials that cannot be repaired or replaced.
  • Accuracy and Currency
    • Outdated or obsolete information, especially in areas such as medicine, science, technology, law, and travel.
  • Usage
    • Items that have not circulated or been used within 5 years (exceptions may be made by the director’s discretion)
  • Duplication
    • Multiple copies no longer needed due to decreased demand.
  • Relevance
    • Materials that no longer meet the current interests or needs of the community.
  • Availability Elsewhere
    • Items easily available through interlibrary loan or other library networks.
  • Superseded Editions
    • Older editions replaced by newer or updated versions.
  • Format
    • Materials in outdated or inaccessible formats (e.g., VHS tapes, CD-ROMs) unless of historical or local significance.
  • Space Considerations

 

Withdrawal Procedures

  • Withdrawn materials are clearly marked and removed from the catalog.
  • Items in poor condition may be recycled or discarded.
  • Materials in good condition may be offered for library book sales, donations, or repurposed according to library policy.
  • Local history or special collection items are reviewed carefully before removal.

Replacement

Items withdrawn due to loss, damage, or high demand may be replaced at the discretion of the Library Director, depending on continued relevance, usage, and budget.

Frequency of Weeding

Weeding is an ongoing process. Each area of the collection should be evaluated at least once every three years.

Evaluation and Accountability

Records of withdrawn materials may be maintained for statistical or reporting purposes. The weeding process supports the library’s mission to provide a current, diverse, and user-focused collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Handling Patron Concerns

Content including language, description, or subjects that may be judged offensive by some does not disqualify material that on the whole has been provided for under the selection criteria. Customers can freely choose or reject materials of which they disapprove for both themselves and their children. It is not their right to restrict the freedom of others to do the same. Inclusion does not constitute endorsement of material content.

Concerns About Library Materials

Concerns will be referred to the Director for response. Library cardholders who are unsatisfied with this response may appeal to the Library Board of Trustees by completing the “Statement of Concern” form (see Appendix). The completed request will be given to the Library Board President for review by the Executive Committee or designated proxy. This review will be completed within 10 business days. The Statement of Concern along with the Executive Committee recommendation will be included on the agenda of the next regularly schedule board meeting. The petitioner will be notified of the meeting date, time and location. The Library Board will then review the request and come to a decision at that time. Their decision is final. Statements of concern for the same material (regardless of format or edition) will be prohibited for five (5) years. 

A Statement of Concern will not be considered unless the form is completed in its entirety. The individual submitting the request must be a resident of Alton and must hold a valid library card.

The presence of sexually explicit content in library materials does not, by itself, render such materials obscene or unlawful. Obscenity is a legal determination subject to judicial interpretation. Accordingly, no challenged material shall be removed solely on the basis of an allegation of obscenity or any other legally defined category unless and until a court of competent jurisdiction has issued a ruling adverse to the material, at the local, State of Iowa, or Federal level.

(Adopted November 2025, amended April 2026)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Library Bill of Rights

 

The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.

I. 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.

II. 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.

III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.

IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.

V. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.

VI. 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.

VII. 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.

Adopted June 19, 1939, by the ALA Council; amended October 14, 1944; June 18, 1948; February 2, 1961; June 27, 1967; January 23, 1980; January 29, 2019.

Inclusion of “age” reaffirmed January 23, 1996.

Although the Articles of the Library Bill of Rights are unambiguous statements of basic principles that should govern the service of all libraries, questions do arise concerning application of these principles to specific library practices. See the documents designated by the Intellectual Freedom Committee as Interpretations of the Library Bill of Rights.

 

 

 

Freedom to Read

The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label "controversial" views, to distribute lists of "objectionable" books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as individuals devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.

Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad. We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be "protected" against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.

These efforts at suppression are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought against education, the press, art and images, films, broadcast media, and the Internet. The problem is not only one of actual censorship. The shadow of fear cast by these pressures leads, we suspect, to an even larger voluntary curtailment of expression by those who seek to avoid controversy or unwelcome scrutiny by government officials.

Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of accelerated change. And yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of social tension. Freedom has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain. Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with controversy and difference.

Now as always in our history, reading is among our greatest freedoms. The freedom to read and write is almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience. The written word is the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth. It is essential to the extended discussion that serious thought requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge and ideas into organized collections.

We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures toward conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture depend. We believe that every American community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read. We believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings.

The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith in free people will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the responsibilities that accompany these rights.

We therefore affirm these 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.

  1. 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.

  1. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to bar access to writings on the basis of 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.

  1. 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 to be discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared. In these matters values differ, and values cannot be legislated; nor can machinery be devised that will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others.

  1. 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.

  1. 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 concept of politics or morality upon other members of a democratic society. Freedom is no 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.

  1. 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.

This statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester Conference of the American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which in 1970 consolidated with the American Educational Publishers Institute to become the Association of American Publishers.

Adopted June 25, 1953, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee; amended January 28, 1972; January 16, 1991; July 12, 2000; June 30, 2004.

A Joint Statement by:

American Library Association
Association of American Publishers

Subsequently endorsed by:

American Booksellers for Free Expression
The Association of American University Presses
The Children's Book Council
Freedom to Read Foundation
National Association of College Stores
National Coalition Against Censorship
National Council of Teachers of English
The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression

Alton Public Library
Statement of Concern Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials
Date: ___________________________________
1. Personal Information
Name: __________________________________________
Address: ________________________________________
City/State/Zip: __________________________________
Phone: __________________________________________
Email: ___________________________________________
2. Material Being Challenged
Title: ___________________________________________
Author/Creator: __________________________________
Format (book, DVD, etc.): __________________________
Call Number (if known): ____________________________
3. Have You:
•    Read/Viewed/Listened to the entire item?
☐ Yes  ☐ No
•    If not, which parts? _____________________________________________
4. Reason for Request
Please explain why you believe this item should be reconsidered. Be specific—describe the content you object to and the page(s) or section(s), if applicable. 
________________________________________
________________________________________
________________________________________
5. Desired Action
What action are you requesting the library take?
☐ Remove the item from the library
☐ Reclassify or move the item
☐ Restrict access
☐ Other (please explain): _________________________________________________

6. Additional Comments
________________________________________
________________________________________
Signature: _______________________________________
Date: ____________________________________________