West Bend Community Memorial Library Wins Intellectual Freedom Award
RSSBy SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 12/17/2009
The West Bend Community Memorial Library, located just outside of Milwaukee, WI, is making news again—but this time it's being honored for defending intellectual freedom in the face of a library challenge that gained national attention earlier this year.
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Library director Michael Tyree (left front row in white shirt) and his staff are recipients of the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award. |
“The West Bend librarians, library board, and library supporters demonstrated the strong and steadfast advocacy on behalf of intellectual freedom that is the focus of the Downs Award,” says Christine Jenkins, GSLIS associate professor and director of the Center for Children’s Books “Despite the enormous media attention that the controversy received, they were unwavering in their support of the public library's responsibility to provide a diverse collection to serve *all* community members.”
Tyree and his staff shot down a complaint filed in February by local conservative parents Jim and Ginny Maziarka, who initially sought to ban 58 GLBT young adult titles that they felt were obscene or pornographic. They included Brent Hartinger’s Geography Club (HarperCollins), Stephan Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Esther Drill’s Deal With It! A Whole New Approach to Your Body, Brain and Life as a gURL (both S & S).
Ginny Maziarkas, who formed a citizens’ group called the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, later altered her position by expanding her list of objectionable books to 82 titles with sexually explicit themes—and instead of outright banning them, she asked that they be reclassified and moved to the adult section.
In response to her objection, a second citizens’ group was formed, West Bend Parents for Free Speech, which was active in supporting the library’s decision not to move or remove any of the titles in question.
The controversy quickly escalated in the town of 30,000 people—and it got political. In April, the city’s Common Council got rid of four board members for taking too long to resolve the issue—but many say the real reason was because they were likely to vote against moving the sexually explicit books to the adult section.,
Finally, in June the library board voted unanimously in favor of maintaining the young adult collection without removing, moving, labeling, or restricting the books in any way.
The story was picked up by media outlets such as CNN, ABC News, and Fox News, and in mid-July, the Pew Research Center’s Project on Excellence in Journalism ranked the West End book challenges as among the top five blogged-about topics in the news.
A reception honoring the West Bend Library will take place during the American Library Association’s midwinter meeting in Boston at the Arlington Room of the Boston Park Plaza Hotel on January 16, 2010, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The ABC-CLIO publishing company provides the honorarium to the recipient of the Downs Intellectual Freedom Award and also cosponsors the reception.
The Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award is given annually to acknowledge individuals or groups who have furthered the cause of intellectual freedom, particularly as it affects libraries and information centers and the dissemination of ideas.
