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06/13/2002 - Packet AGENDA TIGARD LIBRARY BOARD THURSDAY,JUNE 139 2002 - 7:00 P.M. TIGARD PUBLIC LIBRARY—PUETT ROOM 13125 SW HALL BLVD. TIGARD, OREGON 1. CALL TO ORDER Braun 2. ROLL CALL: BRAUN CHAPMAN_ DIAMOND_ KASSON_ LAWTON SMITH THENELL 3. Approve Minutes of May 9,2002. Braun 4. Agenda Additions and Deletions. Braun 5. Call to the Public. Braun 6. Friends of the Library Report. Burgess 7. Monthly Report for May 2002. Barnes 8. CLAB/LDB Report. Barnes 9. WCCLS Local Option Levy. Barnes 10. Date of September Meeting Barnes 11. New Library. Chapman 12. Library Foundation Diamond 13. Board Communications. All 14. Other Business. 15. Adjournment. TO ENSURE A QUORUM TO CONDUCT BUSINESS, PLEASE CALL CONNIE MARTIN OR MARGARET BARNES AT THE LIBRARY(503-684-6537),IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND. Agenda items for future meetings: TIGARD LIBRARY BOARD MINUTES May 9, 2002 Call to Order: 7:04 p.m., by Chair Braun. Roll Call: Anne Braun, David Chapman, Marvin Diamond, Jeff Lawton, Jane Smith and Jan Thenell. Staff: Margaret Barnes and Connie Martin. Minutes: Chapman moved to approve and accept the minutes of April 11, seconded by Diamond. Motion passed unanimously. Agenda Additions and Deletions: None. Call to the Public: None. Introduction of Nikky Wiles, Library Assistant: Barnes introduced Nikky Wiles to the Board. Nikky works as a Library Assistant in the Circulation Division of the library. She has been with the library over 10 years and has seen many changes. Nikky has always worked in the Circulation Division and is very happy working with the patrons. Her primary duties include assisting patrons with checking out materials. She checks in materials, works at keeping the library directional map up-to-date, takes care of the missing parts items; ensuring that special kits have all the pieces to the kit and are ready to check-out for the next user, and helps take care of all other duties involved with circulation activities. Nikky expressed an interest in knowing about the Board's role with the library. The Board explained their role as a citizen advisory Board appointed by City Council. Questions and answers were exchanged. Reports: Friends of the Library Report: No report was given this month. April Monthly Report: Barnes announced that circulation was up almost 19 percent over April 2001. National Library Week was a success with so many events planned. There were "READ" posters throughout the library. To kick-off National Library Week, Virginia Lopez and the Mambo Queens performed a special musical event on Sunday, April 14, with an appearance of the "Book Worm." The library held a "Check it Out Yourself Day" contest drawing. The annual volunteer recognition event was well attended honoring several volunteers with long-time hours and years of service. CLAB/LDB: At the CLAB/LDB meeting, there was discussion regarding the local option levy and the WCCLS funding formula. The Formula Committee has recommended an outside consultant beginning July 2002 in hopes of resolving the formula funding issues. City managers have shared interest in pursuing this option. The Committee will present an option to County Commissioners in a work session on May 21. With regards to the local option levy, it was recommended by CLAB to move forward with a rate-based levy as opposed to a dollar levy. The levy is proposed to be .26 per $1,000 assessed valuation. As part of the levy, $1 million will be distributed over a five-year period to the Regional Arts Cultural Council. Also discussed at the Director's meeting was digital reference and how it's changing. The County conducted a phone survey and results should be available by June. WCCLS Local Option Levy: The WCCLS Local Option Levy was discussed during the CLAB/LDB report. May CIT Meeting: The Board discussed their appearance at the May CIT meeting. Board members thought the meeting went well and felt good about providing information about the library and representing the citizens of Tigard. Proposed New Library: The model has been making its appearance again at several locations within the City; Tigard Christian Church, United Methodist Church, St. Anthony's, May CIT meeting and Washington Square. Chapman indicated the New Tigard Library Construction Committee did not meet in May, but will meet shortly after the election. Board Communications: Chapman made the comment that he was surprised that with all of the information and media coverage available about the proposed new library that friends of his did not know why a new library was needed. Other Business: None. Adjournment: It was moved by Chapman, and seconded by Thenell to adjourn the meeting at 7:55 p.m. Motion passed unanimously. Next meeting is scheduled for June 13, 2002. Monthly Report May 2002 (Month/Year) for Tigard Library Board (Name of board, committee, task force, group, etc.) 1. Meetings were held on(list dates during month) May 9, 2002 2. Current activities (summarize): The Library Board is in the process of reviewing the policies of the Library. The Library Board is also actively involved in the analysis of the WCCLS funding formula and the proposed WCCLS local option levy. 3. Status of long-term projects: The long-term project that the Library Board is currently working on is creating awareness in the community about the proposed new library. The Library Board actively supports this project by participation and public testimony at City Council and CIT meetings. The Board has also been out in the community making presentations to inform citizens about the proposed new library. The most recent example of this was the presentation given at the May CIT meeting. 4. Number of volunteer hours contributed this month(noted number of volunteers and total hours). The Library Board donated 10 hours during the month of May 5. Attachments (include notifications, sign-in sheets,minutes, reports,press releases, proposals, etc.) - List: 1. Draft copy of the May, 2002 Board Minutes 2. Agenda for June 13, 2002 Meeting 6. Any items to be scheduled for on the Council tentative agenda(list item and date): N/A 7. Status of members—are there any members scheduled to have their terms expire in the next four months? Are any members indicating that they plan to retire, move or resign soon? Please give details. N/A Monthly Report June 2002 (Month/Year) for Tigard Library Board (Name of board, committee, task force, group, etc.) 1. Meetings were held on (list dates during month) June 11, 2002 2. Current activities (summarize): The Library Board is in the process of reviewing the policies of the Library. The Library Board is also actively involved in the analysis of the WCCLS funding formula and the proposed WCCLS local option levy. 3. Status of long-term projects: The long-term project that the Library Board is currently working on is creating awareness in the community about the proposed new library. 4. Number of volunteer hours contributed this month(noted number of volunteers and total hours). The Library Board donated 9 hours during the month of June. 5. Attachments (include notifications, sign-in sheets, minutes, reports, press releases, proposals, etc.) - List: 1. Draft copy of the June, 2002 Board Minutes 2. Agenda for July 11, 2002 Meeting 6. Any items to be scheduled for on the Council tentative agenda(list item and date): N/A 7. Status of members—are there any members scheduled to have their terms expire in the next four months? Are any members indicating that they plan to retire, move or resign soon? Please give details. N/A 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. Adopted June 18, 1948. Amended February 2, 1961, and January 23, 1980, inclusion of"age" reaffirmed January 23, 1996, by the ALA Council. THE 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 avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as citizens 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 citizen,by exercising critical judgment, will accept the good and reject the bad. The censors, public and private, assume that they should determine what is good and what is bad for their fellow citizens. 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 need the help of censors to assist them in this task. 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. 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. 1 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 or unpopular with 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. There is no place in our societyfor 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. 2 5. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept with any expression the prejudgment of a label characterizing it 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 the citizen. 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. 6. 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. 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. 7. 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 citizens 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. 3 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;revised January 28, 1972, January 16, 1991, July 12, 2000, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee. A Joint Statement by: American Library Association Association of American Publishers Subsequently Endorsed by: American Association of University Professors American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression American Society of Journalists and Authors The American Society of Newspaper Editors Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith Association of American University Presses Center for Democracy&Technology The Children's Book Council The Electronic Frontier Foundation Feminists for Free Expression Freedom to Read Foundation International Reading Association The Media Institute National Coalition Against Censorship National PTA Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays People for the American Way Student Press Law Center The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression 4 Freedom to View Statement The FREEDOM TO VIEW, along with the freedom to speak, to hear, and to read, is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In a free society, there is no place for censorship of any medium of expression. Therefore these principles are affirmed: 1. To provide the broadest access to film, video, and other audiovisual materials because they are a means for the communication of ideas. Liberty of circulation is essential to insure the constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression. 2. To protect the confidentiality of all individuals and institutions using film, video, and other audiovisual materials. 3. To provide film, video, and other audiovisual materials which represent a diversity of views and expression. Selection of a work does not constitute or imply agreement with or approval of the content. 4. To provide a diversity of viewpoints without the constraint of labeling or prejudging film, video, or other audiovisual materials on the basis of the moral, religious, or political beliefs of the producer or filmmaker or on the basis of controversial content. 5. To contest vigorously, by all lawful means, every encroachment upon the public's freedom to view. This statement was originally drafted by the Freedom to View Committee of the American Film and Video Association (formerly the Educational Film Library Association) and was adopted by the AFVA Board of Directors in February 1979. This statement was updated and approved by the AFVA Board of Directors in 1989. Endorsed by the ALA Council January 10, 1990 FREE ACCESS TO LIBRARIES FOR MINORS An Interpretation of the LIBRARYBILL OF RIGHTS Library policies and procedures which effectively deny minors equal access to all library resources available to other users violate the Library Bill of Rights. The American Library Association opposes all attempts to restrict access to library services, materials, and facilities based on the age of library users. Article V of the Library Bill of Rights states, "A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age,background, or views." The"right to use a library" includes free access to, and unrestricted use of, all the services, materials, and facilities the library has to offer. Every restriction on access to, and use of, library resources, based solely on the chronological age, educational level, or legal emancipation of users violates Article V. Libraries are charged with the mission of developing resources to meet the diverse information needs and interests of the communities they serve. Services, materials, and facilities which fulfill the needs and interests of library users at different stages in their personal development are a necessary part of library resources. The needs and interests of each library user, and resources appropriate to meet those needs and interests, must be determined on an individual basis. Librarians cannot predict what resources will best fulfill the needs and interests of any individual user based on a single criterion such as chronological age, level of education, or legal emancipation. The selection and development of library resources should not be diluted because of minors having the same access to library resources as adult users. Institutional self-censorship diminishes the credibility of the library in the community, and restricts access for all library users. Librarians and governing bodies should not resort to age restrictions on access to library resources in an effort to avoid actual or anticipated objections from parents or anyone else. The mission, goals, and objectives of libraries do not authorize librarians or governing bodies to assume, abrogate, or overrule the rights and responsibilities of parents or legal guardians. Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents—and only parents—have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children—and only their children—to library resources. Parents or legal guardians who do not want their children to have access to certain library services, materials or facilities, should so advise their children. Librarians and governing bodies cannot assume the role of parents or the functions of parental authority in the private relationship between parent and child. Librarians and governing bodies have a public and professional obligation to provide equal access to all library resources for all library users. Librarians have a professional commitment to ensure that all members of the community they serve have free and equal access to the entire range of library resources regardless of content, approach, format, or amount of detail. This principle of library service applies equally to all users, minors as well as adults. Librarians and governing bodies must uphold this principle in order to provide adequate and effective service to minors. Adopted June 30, 1972; amended July 1, 1981; July 3, 1991, by the ALA Council. [ISBN 8389-7549-6]