Letters to the editor Dec. 9

Don’t like ‘em? Don’t read ‘em!

The board of directors for the ImagineIF Library reminds me of another book: “A Confederacy of Dunces.”

That novel by John Kennedy Toole has its critics. Some dislike it so much they want to censor it, as others want to censor “A Catcher in the Rye” and “Huckleberry Finn.”

It’s an old story. Small-minded, small-time autocrats reel from text and pictures that don’t square with their world view. They “tut-tut” and call for purging the shelves of works they find objectionable.

Somehow, we Americans are slow on the uptake. We say we support the Constitution, but then balk at the very First Amendment.

Here’s my advice to the pearl-clutchers who object to the books on the shelves. If you don’t like ‘em, don’t read ‘em! If you don’t want your kid to read them, then pay attention to what your kid reads.

In my opinion, there are publications on the shelves of every library that aren’t worth the trees that died for them. But that’s my taste. Everyone is entitled to make their own decisions on the way to checkout. That’s the American Way.

Our current library board doesn’t understand this. Their bosses, the Flathead County Commissioners, are asleep at the switch. Meanwhile our gem of a library is bleeding talented staff. How will we ever attract quality replacements under this regime?

Pretty please, O Commissioners, correct this problem before more damage is done. Clean house and appoint board members who understand that libraries exist to put materials in the hands of the people, not take them away.

— Ben Long, Kalispell

Future library director

This is an open letter to the new future director of our award-winning ImagineIf Library.

I hope you will come to know how much our library is appreciated by the people of Flathead County.

You will be pleased to come to know the quality and competence of the staff of the library and the foundation who will support your efforts. I hope you bring with you the skill to settle a system down that has been in crisis mode due to recent executive resignations.

It is my sincere hope that the conflicts and issues that your predecessors have courageously dealt with have already been addressed and that the library board of trustees has learned some painful lessons about how their behavior has fueled the crisis. I hope that some trustees have changed their intrusive and demeaning actions.

I hope you are welcomed to a good work environment with reasonable expectations. If that is not the case, I thank you for the courage it takes to step into significant chronic challenges to do your job, and I take comfort in knowing that you will not be surprised about the conflicts and issues on your first day of work.

— Barbara Myers, Kalispell

Protected freedoms

Thank you Martha Furman for your leadership in guiding the library during these difficult times of budgetary cuts and micromanaging from several board members. A shout out to Sean Anderson and Tony Edmudson and all of the library staff for your commitment and enthusiasm to the vision of what a library is and the dedication to provide open and free access to materials that would inform our community in making important decisions.

A library is an institution that is a mark of the free world in which we live. Our library here in the Flathead Valley, and indeed libraries across the United States, are protected by First Amendment rights which include the freedom of speech. It is because of these protected freedoms that we are able to walk into a library, request materials and have it be available to us without the worry of government overreach.

Yet, interference by Doug Adams and Dave Ingram, library board members, are doing just that. In a statement made by Doug Adams in a recent board meeting, Adams cited the tenets of the American Library Association as “leftist agendas” and remarked that he would like to develop his own idea of what a library is, overreaching his position as a board member. Dave Ingram, in his pursuit to “understand” how the library works, has been hovering in back rooms trying to oversee the professional librarians’ work.

They are not advocates of the library, as board members should be, nor do they understand, from the materials they have been given to read, the duties of what a board member is expected of them.

The next time you walk into your library, thank those people who are there helping you. They do it because of their commitment to strong beliefs of an open, equitable and free library.

—Nancy Pensa, Somers

Library upheaval

The Dec. 2 library board meeting has received a lot of community attention, and it should. I was present at the packed four-hour meeting, and while I won’t say I was shocked at what I heard there (having been present at other meetings), several board members finally said out loud what we all knew their agenda to be.

Trustee Adams firmly stated that his agenda is to “disassociate from the American Library Association and their radical leftist agenda.” I guess it helps to have that right out in the open instead of the thinly veiled comments that have preceded this declaration.

There is one problem, sir. When you signed on to be a trustee, you committed to upholding the mission and vision of this community institution. The county commissioners ostensibly tasked you and the other two new board members with this solemn responsibility, but you have proved to have a different plan.

Just as we have seen with the health board, and attempts to take over local school boards, the county commissioners have placed their operatives in board positions to try and reframe what our public library looks like. This institution, however, is fiercely protected by the First Amendment. And unlike the opinion expressed by John Fuller at the December meeting, the community does not need this board to “protect” us from books that express a wide range of the human experience. I personally reject that paternalistic statement and prefer to make my own decisions.

This board has not only violated Montana law by repeatedly holding illegal meetings that should be opened and noticed, they have tried to insert themselves into the operations of the library, which is extremely inappropriate for a statutory board. It is time for these board members to accept that they have been placed in an impossible situation for which they are vastly ill prepared. They seem to have little understanding of how a library functions, and why the procedures set in place protect all users of the library. They have a poor understanding of the First Amendment, which is crucial and vital to a member of a library board.

County commissioners, your intention to run the library into the ground will fail, and you will be facing an expensive lawsuit if you continue to violate the right of this community to the free access of information. Your culture war will not prevail. Use your personal responsibility and freedom of choice, and choose books that make you feel comfortable, and leave the rest of the community to do the same.

— Valeri McGarvey, Kalispell