Ongoing negotiations between Midland County commissioners and officers with the Midland County Public Library started in mid-February when Precinct 4 Commissioner Dianne Anderson requested for books containing “obscene” content material to be moved from the library’s kids’s phase to the phase for adults. Proposed.
Following that assembly, a public remark duration attracted many Midlanders to the county courthouse to proportion their critiques at the case.
Negotiations stalled for almost a month till March 13 when Anderson known as consideration to the present content material reconsideration procedure within the county libraries. The reconsideration coverage lets in library consumers to fill out a kind to spot titles they to find “obscene” and provide them to library group of workers. Library group of workers have 10 days to reply. If a patron isn’t glad with the library’s resolution on a identify, she or he could make a request to the Library Advisory Board after which to the county commissioners.
Throughout the Commissioners Court docket assembly on April 24, county leaders mentioned the Midland County Public Libraries’ assortment building coverage and revised the reconsideration coverage.
Negotiations slowed once more for a couple of months till August 14 when the county commissioners once more mentioned library coverage and library club. The county voted that the director of Midland County Public Libraries was once to transport “obscene” subject matter from the kids’s and younger grownup sections to the grownup sections.
Moreover, the county ended its partnership with the American Library Affiliation, mentioning a celebratory and since-deleted tweet by which Emily Drabinsky, the brand new president of the American Library Affiliation, presented herself following her appointment as president of the affiliation. Used to be described as “Marxist”.
On August 30, Anderson and 10 volunteers went to the Centennial Library to peer which books will have to be thought to be for removing from the kids’s and younger grownup phase.
Anderson stated in a remark after the August 30 occasions that books weren’t moved to the grownup phase by means of volunteers, nor did any volunteer take away or burn any books.
“Through shifting those fabrics to the grownup phase, if a mum or dad or felony mum or dad needs their (their) kids to learn those fabrics, the verdict is left as much as the mum or dad. Folks can take a look at those fabrics and come to a decision beneath what cases their kids can view, talk about, or in a different way care for the fabrics. Those fabrics will have to now not be to be had to the kid in opposition to his will,” she wrote.
Anderson wrote that the general resolution on which books will likely be formally redesignated will likely be as much as the Midland County commissioners. 4 of the 5 commissioners are Republicans, with Precinct 3 Commissioner Luis Sanchez the lone Democrat. On the other hand, on August 14, Sanchez stated that books that have been obscene for kids will have to be moved to other sections of the library. Precinct 1 Commissioner Scott Ramsey, who has been vocal in his disdain for the county’s movements in regards to the library, puzzled the standards for the way sure books could be thought to be “obscene.”
Precinct 2 Commissioner Jeff Somers has in most cases been quiet at the factor. On August 14, the day the Midland County Public Libraries director was once requested to re-designate “obscene” books, Anderson and County Pass judgement on Terry Johnson voted affirmatively, Somers and Sanchez abstained, and Ramsey abstained. Antagonistic.
Ramsey stated Friday that the crowd of 10 volunteers who attended the Centennial Library on Aug. 30 have been by no means investigated or dropped at the county and he was once deeply bothered by means of the occasions that befell.
County Pass judgement on Terry Johnson has remained constant in his message on reclassifying some titles from formative years to grownup categories, announcing on August 14:
“I’ve masses of people that wish to see this come to fruition and I don’t believe we need to rent masses of other folks to take care of it. I feel we permit the general public, the group requirements that exist right here in Midland, Texas, to come to a decision what they would like in a library and what they do not want of their library.