Ontario's education minister has asked a school board west of Toronto to immediately stop its so-called “weeding” of school libraries after concerns were raised about how it was carrying out the process of assessing and removing older books.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said Wednesday that he wrote to the Peel District School Board asking it to halt the process, a move that came after some Peel Region residents said libraries appeared to be removing books simply because they were published before 2008, based on new board guidelines.
“To be clear, books such as 'The Diary of a Young Girl' by Anne Frank and the 'Harry Potter' series remain in our collections, and where needed, newer versions may be purchased if the book is in poor condition.” “The weeding and seeding, or replenishment, of school book collections has always been a part of the responsibilities for all teacher librarians within Peel District School Board and at school boards across Canada,” she wrote.
The group, called Libraries not Landfills, also said the board's own guidelines appear to suggest books older than 2008 should be removed. “However, what's really concerning is the wholesale removal of huge swaths of books from before 2008. That's really not that long ago. That's when Barack Obama was elected.”
The second and third steps in the weeding guidelines direct librarians to remove books that may have misinformation, are misleading, or reinforce racist content or information that is not gender-affirming.
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