Garfield County Public Library District trustees voted on Aug. 7 to keep the status quo of current library cards without introducing a new age-restricted one, saying they could discuss the issue again in the future if desired.
The vote was 4-1, with trustee Tony Hershey giving the dissenting vote and trustee Stephanie Hirsch absent. Following last month’s meeting, Myrna Fletchall is no longer a member of the board and there is no representative for the community of Rifle.
“I would vote no,” trustee Brit McLin said before the vote, adding, “If not this particular mechanism — what it’s trying to address should still be on the table.” McLin made the motion to table the issue and not introduce the new card.
Hershey, who voted against tabling the discussion, said he was in favor of the new card and would have supported it. “I thought it wouldn’t be the worst idea and I think it could be fun to have a card that is child-oriented,” Hershey said. “Maybe it has Horton [the Dr. Seuss character] on the front.”
Hershey and other proponents of the card from the public said they were in favor of restricting minors’ access to adult materials, specifically mature images in manga books. Dissenters disagreed, saying it shouldn’t be the job of the library to insert itself into a discussion between parents and their children about what materials are acceptable to look at.
“I understand that the library can’t act as the parent, but you know, there’s just some things that kids can’t do,” Hershey said.
Board President Adrian Rippy-Sheehy said that since last month’s meeting, she researched the issue and came away with a list of reasons why an age-restricted card would not be necessary. She said she saw no evidence it should be implemented, and the card would not stop anyone from reading any materials in the library without checking them out, or finding the book at another library or online, or getting an older person to check an item out for them.
Furthermore, she said the part that bothered her most was the notion that the card might lead to discussions about restricting access to other sorts of materials. “Today it’s children and it’s graphics, tomorrow it’s religion. Tomorrow it’s something science-based,” Rippy-Sheehy said. “This feels like an attempt to change the mission of the library.”
Trustee Michelle Foster agreed, saying she was “against censorship of any kind.”
The vote was the result of more than a year of debate involving the trustees and members of the public over a series of manga books that were found in a public area of the library. The board does not currently plan to discuss the issue further at their next meeting, Sept. 11 at the Carbondale Branch Library.
In other news, the board voted to appoint McLin to replace Fletchall on the library budget committee. The committee is responsible for preparing the budget for the coming year for the entire library. McLin said he would be happy to serve, and his appointment was unanimous.