A standing room only crowd attended the Ozark-Dale County Public Library board meeting Wednesday to discuss whether some books in the young adult section should be moved.
Michelle Mann OZARK — A standing room only crowd attended a four-hour special meeting of the Ozark-Dale County Public library board after Ozark Mayor Mark Blankenship took to social media over the weekend to urge residents to call on elected officials to defund the library over LGBTQ materials.
People are also reading… An official request to remove two specific books in the young adult section was filed yesterday, said Library Board Chairman Liz Delaney. “Until yesterday, the staff does not recall getting any recommendation to remove a book in the history of this library.” “Yesterday we received the first complaints on any books as far back as we can go in our history,” Cairns said. “We will have a separate board to review these books to see if they should be removed from the section they are in.”
Social media posts on both sides of the issue ensued during the weekend and several Ozark council members posted comments expressing support of the library and its mission. “I will not be seeking to nor will I ever vote to defund out Ozark-Dale County Public Library,” wrote Ozark City Council President Brenda Simechak. “The government has no business censoring content in a public library. A library’s purpose for existence is to provide access to information to all of its patrons.
After the commission meeting, Enfinger filed an official objection with the Ozark Dale County Library to request that two books be removed from the Young Adults section and be reshelved into the adult section of the facility. “The young adult section of the library is designated for use by library patrons at the age of 12 years old,” Enfinger said. “I am not requesting that any book be banned.
Among them, Ozark Pastor Jim Hill said that his preference would be to move the books to a section of the library where parents would be able to monitor them. He used the analogy of talking about a hot stove to his children when they were young. ‘We taught our children that a stove is hot and they did not touch it,” he said. “We did not remove the stove from our home, we kept an eye on our children around it.
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