Public library seeks literature for all in Freedom to Read Week

By Mo Cranker on March 3, 2018.

mcranker@medicinehatnews.com @MHNmocranker

The Medicine Hat Public Library had a display set up all week to celebrate Freedom to Read Week in the city, to show Medicine Hatters the importance of seeing all sides to a story or an event.

“I think it’s important for libraries to be reflective of the community, and really, the entire world,” said head of non-fiction services Keith McLean. “We’re really careful and try to have books on all religions, like Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and other religions. We also want to accurately reflect other philosophies and interests. It’s important for us to allow people to access different viewpoints at the library.”

McLean says the people behind the scenes at the library make it a priority to not show bias when selecting new books to add to the library’s shelves.

“We’re really not trying to influence our collection to match what we want,” he said. “We’ll consider pretty much anything when it comes to picking books. In the rare case that someone challenges a book, or anything we have here, there’s a process we go through to determine whether we keep it or not.”

McLean says another goal of the public library is to get literature of video content that everyone can understand.

“We try to avoid esoteric stuff, and we aim for more general interest stuff,” he said. “There’s things we definitely avoid that would be better suited to go in a specialty or academic library, but if people do come in with a particular interest, we want them to be able to come in and find it on our shelves, or to be able to order it from another library.”

The library’s display showcased a number of books that have been considered controversial at some point, such as The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill.

“One of the staff members here took a bunch of books that had been challenged in the past, and put the reasons they were challenged on the front of the book,” said McLean. “We wanted to show people why a book was challenged, whether it was racist language or promoting LGTBQ lifestyles, we want people to know that those books are available and why people challenged them in the past.”

For more information on the library go to http://www.mhpl.info

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