Collection Development Policy

Collection Development Policy

The Maple Park Public Library District aims to provide materials that entertain, enlighten, and inform library users in the community. The library is committed to providing access to a useful, current, and dynamic collection through collection development as well as through interlibrary loan. The Collection Development Policy has been adopted by the Board of Library Trustees of the Maple Park Public Library District to guide selectors and to inform the public about the principles upon which selections are made. This policy is a guide to building a meaningful and responsive collection of materials that support the library’s mission. It is also the purpose of this document to affirm the library’s commitment to intellectual freedom for all patrons. It is the public library’s responsibility to make broad and diverse opinions available to the public. It shall be understood that the Maple Park Public Library District Board of Trustees, the library director, and the library staff do not advocate all of the ideas presented in the collection. 

Selection Plan 

While the library director has ultimate authority over the purchase of materials for the collection, selection may be done by other staff members. Selectors consult journals, reviews, and award lists as well as patron requests to determine suitable materials for the collection. Criteria may include one or more of the following: literary merit; enduring value; accuracy; authoritativeness; social significance; importance of subject matter to the collection; timeliness; popular demand; cost; scarcity of material on the subject and availability elsewhere; and quality and suitability of the format. Small libraries do not have the budget to purchase or space to keep every title that may be of interest to their population. Patron requests will be considered for purchase, but in the event that it is not feasible for the library to purchase the material, every effort will be made to locate it through interlibrary loan for the requester. 

Retention and Deselection 

Deselection (commonly known as weeding) is a crucial activity in any library. It clears up space for newer materials and removes outdated information. Lack of circulation is the primary reason for weeding fiction, though age and poor condition are also factors. Nonfiction and non-print materials are weeded or retained based on currency, accuracy, and usefulness. Items with outdated information, particularly in areas such as health, science, and technology, will be weeded with greater regularity to reduce the risk of distribution of misinformation. Weeded materials may be sold, donated, or recycled by the library.

Donations 

Donations of books, DVDs, and audio books are accepted at the Maple Park Public Library District. Collection development criteria are applied to donations just as they are applied to new acquisitions. Only a small percentage of donations become part of the collection due to space restrictions and specific collection requirements. All donated items become property of the Maple Park Public Library District and the library retains the right to sell, recycle, or otherwise dispose of donations. 

Reconsideration 

The library makes an effort to represent diverse perspectives and controversial issues within its collection. Not all library materials may be appreciated by every patron. Residents of the library district who want the library to reconsider the merit of specific titles in the collection will be asked to submit their request in writing by completing and signing the “Request for Reconsideration of Library Material” form, which follows this policy. The Library Board will review written complaints concerning specific titles and action will be determined by the Board’s standards of selection. The Board will communicate the decision and the reasons for it, in writing, to the person who initiated the request for reconsideration. The material will remain in circulation while the process is followed. Each title will only be reviewed once per year.

Responsibility of Patrons 

The Maple Park Public Library District believes that only parents have the right and responsibility to control what their children see, hear, and view in a public library; therefore, we encourage parents to be active participants in their children’s library use. Parents are responsible for allowing access to a library card and communicating with their children about what is appropriate for their family. All are welcome to find materials that interest them while allowing others the same freedom. The library endorses the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read statement and the Library Bill of Rights, which follow: 

Freedom to Read Statement 

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 counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as individuals 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 individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad. 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 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 or unwelcome scrutiny by government officials. 

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. 

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, unpopular, or considered dangerous by 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. 

1. 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. 

1. 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 

1. There is no place in our society for 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. 

1. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept the prejudgment of a label characterizing any expression 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 others. 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. 

1. 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; and by the government whenever it seeks to reduce or deny public access to public information. 

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. Further, democratic societies are more safe, free, and creative when the free flow of public information is not restricted by governmental prerogative or self-censorship. 

1. 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 Americans 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. 

Adopted June 25, 1953, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee; amended January 28, 1972; January 16, 1991; July 12, 2000; June 30, 2004. 

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 19, 1939, by the ALA Council; amended October 14, 1944; June 18, 1948; February 2, 1961; June 27, 1967; January 23, 1980; inclusion of “age” reaffirmed January 23, 1996. 

Request for Reconsideration of Library Material 

Material Title:___________________________________________________________ 

Date:__________________________ 

Name of Requester:______________________________________________________ 

Address:_______________________________________________________________ 

Telephone Number:______________________________________________________ 

E-Mail Address:_________________________________________________________ 

Request from Individual:_________ or Organization:_________ 

Reason for Request:_____________________________________________________ 

______________________________________________________________________ 

______________________________________________________________________ 

______________________________________________________________________ 

______________________________________________________________________ 

______________________________________________________________________ 

______________________________________________________________________ 

______________________________________________________________________ 

Signature:_____________________________________________________________ 

Staff Member:__________________________________________________________

updated 6-26-2025