Inquiries into Banned Books Week decision at ImagineIF lead to more questions

Questions have arisen about the circumstances of ImagineIF Libraries' decision to depart from the American Library Association after the move was cited as a reason to forgo the annual Banned Books Week celebration this year.

Board Chair Dave Ingram has said dropping the yearly celebration stemmed from the county library system's years-old decision to part ways with the American Library Association, or ALA, which takes part in organizing and promoting the event. He and other trustees have criticized the organization, accusing it of promoting Marxist ideology.

Ingram previously cited a vote that occurred in December 2021 which saw the library system part ways with the ALA. But emails obtained by the Daily Inter Lake through a Freedom of Information Act request show that library employees, officials and trustees sought unsuccessfully to find evidence of a vote that cut ties with the association.

In an email sent to library trustees on Sept. 3, library advisor Sierra Benjamin expressed her concern over the apparent decision to not celebrate Banned Books Week. In her email, Benjamin said although she has only been part of the adult programming team for a few years, she couldn’t remember the board forbidding staff from implementing any program. She went on to defend the celebration of Banned Books Week, asking for clarification on the rumors that trustees instructed library officials against observing it.

Soon after, on Sept. 3, outgoing Library Director Ashley Cummins followed-up with trustees, asking for them to provide a response to Benjamin. Trustees Doug Adams and Heidi Roedel asked Chair David Ingram to send a response that points to the “already agreed on policies.”

“I think Dave should craft a response to Sierra and the rest of the staff that we, the board, did away with all programs that we consider to be divisive, offensive or otherwise detrimental to our libraries. Ashley can deliver it. Bottom line is it’s not a director position … nor is it a new decision,” Adams said in an email.

Ingram responded to Benjamin by email, saying he “implemented the will of the board as I understand it regarding Banned Books Week. In the recent past, the board has voted to distance themselves from the ALA.”

Ingram went on to say he instructed Cummins “to follow the current policy of celebrating the library and its functions while remaining nonpartisan and avoiding any potentially divisive, exclusionary or indoctrinating events.”

In the email discussion, Trustee Jane Wheeler said, “We need to let [Cummins] and the staff make choices about programs.” That was followed by a response from Vice Chair Carmen Cuthbertson, who asked for the wording of the supposedly passed motion. Cummins said she believed the motion said to remove all mention of the association from ImagineIF policy and began looking back at the meeting minutes.

But she and Office Manager Teri Dugan could not find a formal vote on the matter. According to an email sent to trustees on Sept. 7, Cummins said she agreed that the library had separated from the American Library Association in both opinion and practice.

“It was discussed at length and implied through the removal of ALA in policy,” Cummins wrote in an email. “I don’t think anyone is questioning the clear intention of separation, but Teri and I are both struggling to find the motion in the minutes/recordings.”

A search for references to the ALA in ImagineIF Board of Trustee meeting minutes from 2019 to current day found no specific motion which sought to distance the library system from the national organization. However, it was discussed many times, particularly by Adams, who spoke about disassociating from the ALA in December 2021.

There are instances where references to the organization have been removed from policy. In May 2022, trustees voted to accept the amended Fair Treatment Policy as recommended by the policy committee, which formerly included references to the ALA’s Bill of Rights. That policy, 1001, still includes the contents of the ALA’s Bill of Rights, but references to the organization were removed.

When asked to point to evidence of trustees voting to leave the ALA, Ingram forwarded a response he sent to a patron with a similar inquiry on Oct. 6. He reiterated ImagineIF is not a member of the ALA and has not been for several years.

“Therefore, a specific vote was not necessary,” Ingram wrote in the email in contrast to what he previously told the Daily Inter Lake. “However, to my knowledge, there have been multiple votes over the past several years in open meetings, approving policy updates during scheduled reviews at which time attention has been given to avoiding reference to the ALA or citing their policies.”

According to former Library Director Connie Behe, ImagineIF didn’t have a membership with the ALA during her time with the library system, which spanned 12 years until her resignation in July of 2021. She said on occasion, individual memberships for librarians were paid for using the General Fund.

One of the more seemingly substantial conversations about removing references to the ALA can be found in meeting minutes from a board retreat in March 2022. Notes from that meeting said some trustees see the organization as having a political agenda. Trustees gave examples of where they see the association taking stances, but the group did not come to consensus on the removal of the ALA.

In an interview on Monday, Adams said he remembers voting on a motion to distance themselves from the ALA, suggesting it might have gone unreflected in the meeting minutes. He acknowledged the possibility that his memory is faulty regarding the vote, but said the board’s stance is clear.

“If it makes the public feel better for us to do another formal vote, then I’m not opposed to it,” Adams said. “And I was against it, because I think we’ve already done it. I would not be opposed to doing it again just to make people satisfied, but we will have to see what the rest of the board thinks about that.”

At September’s trustee meeting, Wheeler spoke in opposition of how the board came to the conclusion to forgo Banned Books Week. She said in an interview on Tuesday that she did not want to discuss how she would vote on the matter until it officially came before the board. However, she pointed to parts of her previous statement, which said that the trustees should leave programming decisions to the staff.

“Finally, in several places in the trustee manual it also addresses the board’s relationship to the library director, in one place saying that trustees should not interfere with the duties of the director, and in another instance saying that ‘While the library director reports to the board, the board does not supervise the director’s day-to-day activities,’” Wheeler’s statement to her colleagues read.

The ImagineIF Board of Trustees are not alone in their desire to distance the library system from the ALA. According to the Montana Free Press, the Montana State Library voted to leave the association in July, citing the organization’s alleged Marxist ideology and concerns from local librarians. Cuthbertson also sits on the State Library Commission and voted to leave the organization.

Opponents of that move argued that the ALA is a good resource for professional training. A response from the ALA in July touted the organization's resources for continuing education and professional development opportunities as well as the $218,000 in grants awarded to Montana libraries over the past two years.

Banned Books Week is supported by the ALA, along with many other organizations. The official site for the observance, bannedbooksweek.com, is managed in part by the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, which also publishes a list of the most challenged books in the United States each year.

Reporter Taylor Inman can be reached at 406-758-4433 or by emailing tinman@dailyinterlake.com.