The purpose of the Collection Development Policy is to provide the community and library staff documentation which informs and supports the development of the library collection. This document will provide guidance to Hayward Public Library staff and inform the public of the principles upon which the library makes decisions regarding the development and maintenance of the collection. While this policy will not replace the judgment of librarians, it serves to assist them in making decisions when choosing from available materials.
The Hayward Public Library promotes and celebrates the diverse cultural heritage of the community in all services and programs. The Hayward Library is committed to providing materials and services that support every individual’s right to know and that encourage the development of a lifelong interest in reading and learning. The Hayward Library is an accessible materials and reference center, actively promoting the use of its diverse collection through the assistance of trained and helpful staff. The Hayward Library serves as an advocate and resource for new readers of all ages.
A. Collection Development Goals
B. Selection Guidelines
Library materials are chosen to serve the information, education, cultural, and recreational needs of the community. The Library selects materials on a large variety of subjects and in different formats, responding to the wide range of ages, ethnicities, languages, educational backgrounds, interests, and reading skills of library patrons. Materials are available in a variety of formats, quantities, and titles.
Collection development decisions are based on staff judgement and expertise, knowledge of what is already in the collection, and reviews in professional journals. Selection criteria includes but is not limited to: past and anticipated public demand; contemporary significance and timeliness; literary or artistic merit; the need for and availability of information or materials in the subject area; authoritativeness of the author or publisher; favorable reviews in standard selection sources; cost; and shelving space available in the library. Selections are made to build and maintain a balanced collection and to include a variety of viewpoints and opinions to meet community needs.
C. Patron Requests and Recommendations
The Hayward Public Library welcomes suggestions and feedback from the community for purchases of materials. All suggestions are given deliberate examination and are subject to the same criteria as all other Library materials purchased. Staff and the public are encouraged to recommend materials for consideration.
D. Gifts and Memorials
The library accepts gifts of library materials with the understanding that the same selection guidelines are applied to gifts as are applied to materials purchased by the library. The Library reserves the right to make final disposition of all gifts received; most are donated to the Friends of the Library for inclusion in their book sales.
Please contact the Supervising Librarian to discuss memorial donations. Commemorative bookplates are available for placement in materials.
E. Collection Maintenance & Evaluation
Collection maintenance and evaluation is important to ensure the materials in the Library are balanced and responsive to community needs. The Library strives to maintain an up-to-date, useful collection. Statistical tools such as circulation reports help librarians to determine how the collection is being used, and community demographic information will be used to help keep abreast of changing community needs.
During the process of evaluation, the librarian will have the opportunity to identify subjects where materials are needed, missing titles that should be replaced, older editions of titles which should be updated, and subjects, authors, and titles that are no longer in demand in the community. Titles and items are withdrawn from the collection through periodic, systematic review by librarians. Materials may be withdrawn because they are worn, obsolete, or seldom used; superseded by a newer edition or better work on the subject; or physically damaged or in poor condition.
A. Children’s Collections: A robust collection of print and media materials for children, items are provided in multiple formats for a wide range of interests, ages, and reading levels. Although the library strives to provide basic curriculum support, we do not attempt to purchase in sufficient quantity for required reading or other district-wide projects. Special collections in the children’s area include:
B. Teen Collections: A collection of books and magazines is maintained for teens, with awareness of the variety of interests, backgrounds, reading skills, and development levels within this age group. This book collection is overwhelmingly fiction selected for recreational reading. The non-fiction titles in the collection are on subjects that meet the developmental needs of teens as well as titles of contemporary interest to this age group.
C. Adult Collections: Fiction and non-fiction collections including books, CDs, DVDs, periodicals, and online materials, with an emphasis on popular works, basic reference, and homework support. Special collections include:
D. Digital Collections: The Library provides a variety of electronic resources for all age groups that are accessible via the Library’s webpage at times and locations convenient to the users. Digital collections may include:
Hayward Public Library advocates the freedom to read as indicated in the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, Freedom to Read, and Freedom to View Statements. Hayward Public Library does not censor library materials of any nature to any member of the community. Library staff and patrons may not impose their views, values, and biases upon one another.
The Library's collection is the reflection of its diverse community, and inclusion in the library’s collection does not reflect endorsement of any specific contents or belief. Library materials are not identified or marked to show approval or disapproval based on its content. The Library upholds the right of the individual to access information. Parents and guardians have the right and responsibility make decisions about the materials suitable for their own children. The Library does not regulate what a child reads, views, or checks out.
The purpose of the Collection Development Plan is to provide the community and library staff with a document that provides justification for the development of library collections. It ensures that the focus of the collections purchased remains the diversity of community interest. Despite this, occasional objections will be made by the community regarding material selection. In response, the Library has created a formal procedure for review of challenged materials. Patrons may submit a Request for Reconsideration Form (see Appendix C) for staff to re-evaluate the collection. The final decision will rest upon the Library Director.
The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.
I. 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.
II. 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.
III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
V. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
VI. Libraries which 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.
Although the Articles of the Library Bill of Rights are unambiguous statements of basic principles that should govern the service of all libraries, questions do arise concerning application of these principles to specific library practices. See the documents designated by the Intellectual Freedom Committee as Interpretations of the Library Bill of Rights.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hayward Public Library selects material with great care, using established criteria and giving full consideration to the varying age groups as well as differing education and cultural backgrounds of customers the Library serves. The selection criteria are described in the Collection Development Statement, which is available on the Library’s website.
Download Request for Reconsideration of Library Materials Form