State commission moves to strike standard for library directors; Montana Free Press, October 11, 2023

 Alex Sakariassen, Montana Free Press; State commission moves to strike standard for library directors

"The Montana State Library Commission voted Wednesday to strike a longstanding professional requirement applied to the directors of Montana’s eight largest libraries, one that dictates whether those libraries qualify for state funding.

Currently, public libraries that serve more than 25,000 people must employ a director with a graduate degree in library or information science in order to qualify for state certification and, by extension, state revenue. A task force earlier this year recommended that the library commission maintain that requirement. However, several commissioners Wednesday argued that professional standards should be left to local library trustees to set...

Gregory added that Montanans expect their accountants, physicians and attorneys to meet certain educational benchmarks and that removing a similar standard for library directors sends the message that “librarianship is not a profession that needs a professional course of study or license.”"

Warren County tries to control local library in LGBTQ+ book debate; The Washington Post, September 15, 2023

 Gregory S. Schneider, The Washington Post; Warren County tries to control local library in LGBTQ+ book debate

"Warren County supervisors, under pressure from a group of conservative activists who want to remove LGBTQ+ materials from children’s sections of the library, withheld three-quarters of Samuels’s operating funds from the budget that went into effect July 1. Library leaders tightened parental controls, but the activists’ attacks broadened, until the county proposed a fundamental change in the way the library operates.

If the library cedes greater control to the county over which books stay and go, the budget woes would go away. But the Samuels board of trustees voted 11-1 Thursday to stand their ground, defending their book selection policies as protecting the interests of vulnerable minority groups in the community and fairly representing everyone.

“We don’t want to get sued and we don’t want to discriminate,” Melody Hotek, president of the board of trustees, said earlier in an interview with The Washington Post. “So we’re holding the line.”

The standoff in Front Royal is the first example in Virginia of attacks on books threatening the operation of a public library. Most fights over literature have taken place in school libraries, part of a national movement by conservative activists seeking to ban or restrict access to books they find objectionable. A few other Virginia counties have wrestled with objections to LGBTQ+ or sexually explicit content in public libraries, but none has yet resulted in a battle for funding."