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Three Rivers Public Library District Logo

Collection Development Policy

  1. Objectives
    1. The purpose of Three Rivers Public Library District is to provide all members of the community with carefully selected materials to enhance the pursuit of education, information, pleasure and recreation.
    2. Due to the volume of publishing, as well as the limitations of budget and space, the library must have a selection policy in place in order to best meet the community’s needs and interests. Due to the wide variety of ages, interests, comprehension levels and backgrounds, the library strives to maintain a diverse collection of quality materials.
    3. Three Rivers Public Library District supports the Library Bill of Rights, The Freedom to Read Statement and The Freedom to View Statement, which are attached and adopted as part of this policy.
  2. Responsibility for Selection
    1. The authority and responsibility for the selection of library materials are delegated to the Library Director, and, under his or her direction, to additional staff members who are qualified for this activity. No employee may be disciplined or dismissed for the selection of library materials when the selection is made in good faith and in accordance with the written policy to be established pursuant to Illinois Library Law.
  3. Selection Criteria
    The general criteria utilized in selecting materials include:
    1. Significance, both current and historical, and permanent value to the existing collection
    2. Popular appeal/demand
    3. Input gathered from critical reviews and selection sources
    4. Suitability of material for intended audience
    5. Timeliness of subject matter
    6. Quality or format, including technical quality and durability
    7. Hardware or software requirements
    8. Availability
    9. Existing library holdings
    10. Space and Budget
    11. Each type of material must be considered in terms of its own excellence and the audience for whom it is intended. No single standard can be applied in all cases and materials are judged on the basis of the work as a whole, not on a part taken out of context.
    12. Due to limited budget and space, the library cannot provide all materials that are requested. Therefore, Interlibrary Loan is used to obtain materials from other libraries that are beyond the scope of this library’s collection. In return for utilizing Interlibrary Loan to satisfy the needs of our community, Three Rivers Public Library District agrees to have its holdings accessible and lend its materials to other libraries through the same networ
  4. Gifts and Donations
    The library accepts gifts of books and other materials with the understanding that they will be added to the collection only if appropriate, utilizing the same criteria as purchased materials. If the materials are not deemed appropriate for the collection, the items may or may not be added to the library book sale. The Library Director, staff or board members will not appraise any donation of materials or offer an onsite evaluation of materials. Monetary gifts will be accepted for items specifically purchased for the collection with the authorization of the Library Director.
  5. Maintenance of the Collection
    A current, orderly and useful collection is maintained through a continual withdrawal and replacement process. Replacement of worn materials is dependent on current demand, usefulness, more recent acquisitions and availability. The ongoing process of weeding is the responsibility of the qualified staff and is authorized by the Board of Trustees. Withdrawn materials will be handled in a similar manner and under the same authority as donated materials.
  6. Reconsideration of Materials
    Three Rivers Public Library District believes that people have the right to decide for themselves what is appropriate reading material. Responsibility for materials chosen by children under 18 rests with their parents or legal guardians. A patron finding materials objectionable may request that the item be reconsidered. No material is automatically removed from the collection due to an objection.
    Three Rivers Public Library District patrons wishing to request reconsideration must submit a Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials form to the Library Director. The form must be filled in completely to be considered. The Library Director will review the item and the form. If the determination of the Library Director is unacceptable to the complainant, the complainant may take the matter before the Library Board of Trustees who shall make the final determination. The complainant must attend the next regularly scheduled Board meeting to present their request to the Library Board. A copy of the Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials is attached to and part of this policy. Copies of any requests shall be sent to all Board members for informational purposes only.


Adopted 03/01/00
Revised 02/09/11, 03/14/18
Reviewed 03/11/20, 03/09/22

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
  4. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
  5. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
  6. Libraries that 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.

The 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.


This statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester Conference of the American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which in 1970 consolidated with the American Educational Publishers Institute to become the Association of American Publishers.

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.

Freedom to View Statement

The FREEDOM TO VIEW, along with the freedom to speak, to hear, and to read, is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States . In a free society, there is no place for censorship of any medium of expression. Therefore these principles are affirmed:

  1. To provide the broadest access to film, video, and other audiovisual materials because they are ameans for the communication of ideas. Liberty of circulation is essential to insure the constitutionalguarantee of freedom of expression.
  2. To protect the confidentiality of all individuals and institutions using film, video, and other audiovisualmaterials.
  3. To provide film, video, and other audiovisual materials which represent a diversity of views andexpression. Selection of a work does not constitute or imply agreement with or approval of the content.
  4. To provide a diversity of viewpoints without the constraint of labeling or prejudging film, video, or otheraudiovisual materials on the basis of the moral, religious, or political beliefs of the producer orfilmmaker or on the basis of controversial content.
  5. To contest vigorously, by all lawful means, every encroachment upon the public's freedom to view.

This statement was originally drafted by the Freedom to View Committee of the American Film and Video Association (formerly the Educational Film Library Association) and was adopted by the AFVA Board of Directors in February 1979. This statement was updated and approved by the AFVA Board of Directors in 1989.

Endorsed January 10, 1990, by the ALA Council

Request for Reconsideration of Materials


Date:_______________________________

Location: Channahon or Minooka

MATERIAL

Title: ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Author: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Format: Book Movie Other

REQUESTOR

Name: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Library Card Number: ___________________________

Address: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Preferred Method of Contact: Phone Number or Email

Requesting on behalf of: Yourself  or Organization (Please specify) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  1. Please state your objection to the material (Please be specific; cite page numbers, examples,
    etc.)______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
  2. What good or valuable elements do you find in the material?__________________________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
  3. Have you read/listened/viewed the entire item? Yes No If not, which parts did you?___________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
  4. Is there other material that you would recommend in place of this item?______________________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Please return to the Library Director when completed.

Staff Use Only: Date received ____________   Decision ____________   Date patron contacted ________________