New borough policy calls for additional vetting of library books

A new library policy for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, introduced earlier this month, calls on an advisory board to review new materials for all of the borough’s five public libraries. But other library officials question the purpose of the change.

Borough Community Development Director Jillian Morrissey introduced the new policy — which she said would go into effect in August — at a library board meeting earlier this month. She said the new procedure is meant to promote “transparency” and claimed it’s becoming more commonplace for advisory committees to provide input on public libraries’ collections.

But other library officials said the change is unusual. Currently, librarians follow an internal review process for purchasing books based on community needs and requests, following an existing borough policy for collections development.

David Cox is the chair of the Alaska Library Association’s Collection Development Roundtable, which aims to improve library resources for Alaskan libraries. He said advisory boards typically look at the big picture, not specific materials.

“They’re looking at vision,” he said, “But getting into that nitty-gritty, daily sort of activity is a sort of thing that a board hires staff to do.”

He added that librarians already follow a collection plan when reviewing new materials, and doubling those efforts through another, separate board would take up more time and money.

“You’re already employing someone to be really diving in and doing some of this process of looking for and selecting based on your community’s already existing collection development policy,” he said. “Adding a step to look at it where somebody repeats all of that sort of analysis, just seems incredibly inefficient.”

Morrissey has not replied to multiple emails from KTNA asking for examples of other library systems with policies calling for board review of all new materials.

The borough’s five libraries add anywhere from 400-600 new materials to their collections in a given month, according to local librarians. Considering that the library board only meets nine months out of the year, library board member Mary Fischer voiced concerns about providing thoughtful analysis on so much material.

“You have asked this board to take on a herculean task, to review four-to-six hundred books a month without time to read them or to review their content,” Fischer told the borough. “You would have us judge a book by its cover.”

Pushes for more transparency and community involvement in the Mat-Su libraries aren’t new. In 2023, the Mat-Su Borough School District formed the Library Citizens Advisory Committee, an advisory board meant to review challenged materials in school libraries. In 2024, the Borough created a second Library Citizens Advisory Committee, meant to review challenged materials in their public libraries. 

The American Library Association has reported a sharp recent increase in challenges to library materials nationally, and that “the vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color.”