Lafayette’s Public Library will no longer feature book displays on subjects deemed to be “political” in a bid to take library workers “off of the frontlines” of culture war issues, according to Library Director Danny Gillane.
Previously the library system would highlight celebrations like Pride Month, which began Wednesday, or Black History Month, which occurs in February, with displays of prominent books on those subjects at some of its locations.
But going forward, any displays that highlight only part of Lafayette’s population will be halted, including displays centering on Cajun & Creole culture, religious holidays and other group-specific topics.
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“We want to take the spotlight away from anything considered political and focus on what the library does best: Providing programs and services to everyone in Lafayette Parish. Period,” Gillane wrote in an email to library managers last week.
Though the library will no longer set up displays of books and materials highlighting those topics, the materials will remain on their shelves in the library’s collection just as before, Gillane said.
The change comes at the start of Pride Month, which Gillane attributed to unfortunate timing but also a series of challenges levied at LGBTQ+ library materials.
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“This is about Lafayette’s local politics. This is about this national argument,” he said Thursday. “I’m trying to take my staff off of the front lines.”
Last year, the library had three Pride Month displays across its nine locations, which Gillane said drew complaints from members of the public and of the library’s Board of Control.
In recent months, three LGBTQ+ items have been challenged for removal from the library’s collection, though none have been removed. None of those materials were part of displays when they were challenged.
“We made this decision, and Pride Month, unfortunately, is the month that happened next. Had women’s history month been in June, I can’t tell you whether we would have done this or not,” Gillane said.
“But I knew that there were gonna be issues with Pride Month displays, and I wanted to avoid the issues. And in order to avoid the issues and be fair, I just killed them all.”
After recent challenges to LGBTQ+ materials failed, the library’s Board of Control voted to expand its ability to remove books from the library’s collection since librarians had twice thwarted those efforts in opposition to board members.
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Gillane said he made the decision to halt certain types of displays before notifying the board of the change Tuesday and that the decision was not to protect the board or to throw it under the bus.
But the move drew national attention this week, landing the library in reports by Newsweek and ABC News, as the library continues to be the center of local culture war issues.
Lynette Mejia, a local advocate for the library, argued the library should not be trying to avoid issues over materials in its collections, arguing that it should be a place where people are exposed to different cultures and ideas.
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“The library is absolutely ground zero for culture wars. I mean, the library is the repository for our culture. Libraries, museums, all these places are the places that hold our history. They hold our culture. They hold information about who we are, what we are, and, frankly, what we value, because the library can’t hold everything,” she said.
“We put in our libraries the things that we value. And so those choices that we make as a society, as a community, say something about us. The choices that we make about what to highlight from the library, from those collections, say something about us as a community. And the choice to prohibit those displays says something about us as a community.”
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