The Macon County Public Library Board of Trustees will now require the county librarian to present to the board a list of books removed from the library’s shelves every two months. The unanimous vote was on a request from Trustee Leah Gaston.
The library typically removes books due to damage or lack of circulation, said Librarian Abby Hardison. In some case, library books are re-ordered when they are damaged if they circulate frequently enough. In others, the books simply fall apart from age without circulating. Space can also dictate how often materials are removed, but not in all circumstances. Hardison said the library’s movie shelf is full, but every single movie has circulated, so staff could not remove any DVDs.
Hardison expressed concern that a raw list of books removed would not necessarily include the reasons given as to why an individual piece of the collection were removed, and to track down and include that information would take too much work.
While discussing the new requirement, Trustee Debbie Franken asked why the library had so many books with the word “transgender” in them, saying she had run a keyword search at the Macon County Public Library and found 75 instances of the word and 49 at the Hudson Library. Franken said the library’s collection lacked a comparable body of materials showcasing anti-trans views.
“If you do a search for alternative viewpoints on gender politics or trans medicine, we were only able to find five books in all the Macon County libraries and they were all donated,” Franken said. “According to the collection and development policy, all the viewpoints should be represented.”
Discussing the need for the library to maintain a balanced collection, Hardison said, “There is a balance as a weight on a scale, but there is also a balance to community response and need. For instance, we have a lot of cookbooks. We might have a lot, and I don’t know the ratio of Mexican food to Chinese food or that kind of thing. But on any given topic, you can have not even just two sides, you can have several sides. And I think it’s important that how we allocate our resources is reflective on how [the collection] is used.”
Franken asked why the library had not purchased “Swimming Against the Current” by Riley Gaines, which she said was a USA Today bestseller, to host an alternative viewpoint. Hardison said she would take a look at the book in question.
Hardison said the library uses a combination of lists to determine which books to order, including Publishers Weekly, the Evangelical Christian Press Association, the New York Times Bestseller list as well as book clubs like Reese’s Book Club or the Oprah Book Club.
Gaston said the library had a lack of “abstinence-based books” in the library’s teen section and she had requested more abstinence books be added to the section a year ago.
“We’ve had some … they’re no longer on the new shelf, but we’re still waiting on the one that we had discussed that had been postponed again to 2026, ‘The One that I was Looking for’ by Daniel Rush,” Hardison said. “I’m looking for titles that are of that topic.”
Gaston said a year was “quite a long time to wait for any abstinence-based books for the library, for teens and young adults.”
Hardison confirmed with the Press after the meeting 13 Christian lifestyle books discussing abstinence as a topic have been added since February 2023, seven donated and six purchased. All those books are available in the teen section.