On Tuesday, September 10 the School of Information Sciences held its annual Alumni Recognition event.

The event honors alumni, students, faculty, staff, and donors and offers an opportunity to hear current news and updates related to SIS.

This year three SIS alumnae were honored with the school's top awards:

Professional Service Award - Holly Hebert

Holly Hebert is an associate professor and the program coordinator for the Master of Library Science Program at Middle Tennessee State University. She earned her Ed.D. in Assessment, Learning, and Student Success – Higher Education Concentration in 2024 and her M.L.I.S. from Wayne State University in 2004. Her research interests include information literacy, online learning, public libraries, and collection development. Her work can be found in several professional journals including the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (JOLIS), and Public Library Quarterly. She is active in multiple professional library organizations and is currently the Vice President/President-Elect for the Tennessee Library Association.

Distinguished Alumna Award - Erin Schmandt

Erin Schmandt became a library director accidentally on purpose at the age of 22. She is passionate about small, rural public libraries, so that is where she spends her time and energy. Erin is currently the director of the Caro Area District Library, in the Thumb. She also serves as a library board member of the Millington Arbela District Library, a board trustee of the Michigan Library Association, a member of the Advocacy Committee of the Michigan Library Association, and is a Caro Rotarian. She spent ten years as the director of the River Rapids District Library in Chesaning. Earning her MLIS from Wayne State University in 2005 provided Erin with a strong foundation for her career. Due to the library’s handling of a series of book challenges, the Caro Area District Library was awarded the inaugural Intellectual Freedom Award from the Michigan Library Association in 2023. Erin’s husband, Hans, and sons Peyton and Qwilleran are proud of her and how she has been weathering this battle.

Patricia B. Knapp Award - Sandy Belz

Prior to earning an MLIS degree at Wayne State University in December 2023, Sandy worked in the behavioral health field starting in the early 1990s. She earned a Master's degree in clinical psychology in 2002 and worked as a psychotherapist from 2003 to 2023. Her work in behavioral health revealed the need for quality health information for both practitioners and patients. While attending the School of Information Sciences, she had the privilege of working with Drs. Charbonneau and D'Arpa on their research regarding how libraries promote health literacy. In January 2024, Sandy began working as a cataloger at The Library Network, a library cooperative in Novi, Michigan, where she contributes to making information accessible and discoverable at public libraries in southeast Michigan.

Event attendees also heard Erin Schmandt speak about the book challenges her library faced in the last several years. In the speech, Ms. Schmandt shared how she and the library staff interacted with the community and media to fight censorship and challenges to intellectual freedom. Full of timely recommendations and strategies, the speech was a reminder of the important role libraries play in advocating for access to information. The text of the speech can be found below.

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Good evening. Thank you so very much for this honor. I loved my time at Wayne, it prepared me for so many things in my career. Unfortunately, there are some things that no school, workshop, or webinar can prepare you for.

First, a little background on our fight. I’m the director of a small, rural public library in the Thumb. The first materials challenge of my career came in 2020, in the middle of COVID. Three days before we were on the ballot for a millage that would fund us for the next ten years, postcards were sent throughout our district telling people to vote no on our millage because we had pornography on our website. Spoiler alert: we did not have pornography on our website. What the senders were talking about was an eBook in our collection that was a piece of Victorian erotic literature written anonymously in the 1800s, its even out of copyright. We have a materials challenge policy, but their first move was the postcards. They didn’t even try to talk to anyone at the library. Eventually they tried all kinds of things. Notably, bringing dozens of their friends to public comment at our Zoom board meetings to inform us that the library staff would rot in hell, trying to get us to use the eBook product for schools, getting us to leave the digital cooperative and getting our own collection. Frankly, we can’t afford that. Eventually, they even followed the policy. Because we share that eBook collection with 40+ other libraries, we wouldn’t have even had the authority or ability to ban this book. No amount of reasoning or explanations would satisfy them. On the advice of our attorney, the Board eventually passed a resolution that we were going to stay in the Overdrive collection as pulling out would have a much more detrimental effect on our patrons and that we don’t make decisions on what patrons can read.

At that point, we thought “Whew! We are so glad that is over!”. What it actually turned out to be was a training exercise for 2023.

Early in 2023, a patron filed a “Request for Reconsideration” form for the book Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. The patron requested that the book be banned from the library because she was concerned that her 2 & 4-year-old children might see it. The book is cataloged in the adult collection in our library. Our building is two stories tall. The children’s area is in the lower level and the adult and young adult areas are on the first floor. Of course, we allow patrons of all ages in whatever area they wish. She was concerned that while she was browsing in the adult area, her children might pick it up and be scarred by it. Now, I don’t know how many of you have children or have cared for small children at any time. There are many things that I might think are not appropriate for small children. In my house, examples would be: knives, Sharpies, super glue, and anything that creates fire. Now, if a child in my house happened to pick up a knife from the kitchen table or a Sharpie from the counter, what would I do? I would take it from them and explain that I don’t think they are ready to handle that. What can parents do if they are concerned about what reading material their children might encounter in the library? They can use the library with them and if the child picks up something the parent thinks they shouldn’t have, they can take it from them and explain that it is something that they are not ready for.

I could probably spend several hours explaining all the events of 2023, but that is not why we are here. Let me sum those up as quickly as I can. There ended up to be over 30 forms filed asking/telling us to ban Gender Queer. Most of the people filling them out admitted that they had never read the book. Upon the advice of our attorney, the library board passed a resolution that we would not ban the book. The group asking for that ban quickly pivoted to another subject. They created an online petition to have specific human development books in our children and teen collections moved from their respective locations to the adult collection. Their reasoning was that these books showed cartoon drawings of naked people and sex acts and this would warp children. They also did not like that the books addressed LGBTQ+ relationships. In addition to the online petition, they tried so many things. Notably, bringing in television news channels to our meetings, attempting to recall two of our library board members, a protest, bringing in a fire & brimstone pastor during our public comment to inform us that the devil is working in us and that we are all going to hell, putting signs in their yards, lots and lots of disinformation, a virulent rash of online harassment that still continues today, and a tactic that I call “Death by FOIA”. After many, many meetings (most of which had to be moved from our building because of space constraints), our Board passed resolutions stating that we would not move the books from their age appropriate locations. Moving the books to other areas away from their intended audience is a form of censorship as evidenced in Sund v. City of Wichita Falls. Children’s First Amendment rights do not begin the day they turn 18. We at the library believe in the power of the parent. If a parent does not want their child to access certain materials, they are welcome to use the library with them and help the child choose materials.

After all that backstory, I can finally get to what I was asked to tell you about: How our staff and our Board stood up for the rights of our patrons and how you can too.

First, plan ahead. No Michigan library is big enough or small enough to be immune to this movement. When it is happening to you, everything feels immediate. It is not. Take a breath. You can respond to things like voicemails, emails, and letters the next day or later. Take your time to think about and research things and make sure you are handling it correctly. Make sure you have good policies. While money is hard to come by for some places, a good attorney is worth her weight in diamonds. Create relationships with as many people as you can in your community. Positive relationships with those in power have helped me keep tabs on what they are seeing too.

Second, let your staff know you support them. They need to know what is going on, and that you have their back. You may not be able to tell them all the knitty gritty details, but they should know the gist. I made sure to tell my staff that if a patron approached them about this topic, they were to come get me or my assistant director. They did not need to get into it with anyone. I have LGBTQ+ staff members and they were terrified that patrons would come after them. We did have staff that were approached outside of the library. One ended up being confronted at her nephew’s baseball game in another town. I encouraged her to report it to the police as it was very aggressive, almost to the point of violence. We also had death threats made online against a staff member. She was able to get a restraining order against that person. Make sure your staff is in the know, has tools to deal, and feels supported.

Next, use your resources (Co-op director, Library of Michigan, attorney, MLA, Intellectual Freedom Coalition, etc.). Find supportive co-workers, board members, librarian friends, regular friends, and family to vent to. Accept that there are days when you will accomplish none of your normal tasks. While it feels like EVERYONE is against you, it is actually a very small, VERY LOUD minority. Remind yourself of this. Possibly hourly. You will most likely be called horrible names. Try not to take that personally. (You still will.) You will have to repeat yourself over and over. Stay calm, stay consistent. Know that you are right. Keep your Board in the loop but be mindful. Get yourself some great library director friends, they will understand things better than anyone else in your life.

Handling media: Regular media is a cakewalk, they follow the “rules”. Route everything through one person for consistency. In our small library, that person is me. Larger libraries may have someone designated to handle media. When dealing with newspaper and television media, keep your message consistent. Answer questions with policy & procedure. It doesn’t make for exciting viewing, but we are not here to entertain.

Social media is the wild, wild west. First, get a handle on your personal social media, they will dig. Lock down anything that you don’t want broadcast. Cull your friends list if need be. One of my coworkers was turned into a nasty meme from a post on her personal account. Handling the library’s social media is something else. Again, larger libraries probably have someone or a team of people to handle their social media. At our small library, that person is me. For the first 2/3 of 2023, I avoided following our attorney’s advice. She told me to turn off comments. The library is not required to let patrons comment on their social media posts. If we allow anyone to comment, we must allow everyone to comment. There were many people standing up for us against the people trying to ban books. The hardest thing for me to watch was when the book banners would go after our supporters. They would dig through their public social media and attack. It was incredibly hard to witness. Finally, in August of 2023, I did turn off the comments. It had positive effects for myself and all of my staff who did not have to witness the vitriol every day. It did affect our reach on social media. Facebook’s algorithms give higher reach to posts that are reacted to and commented on. Once the comments were shut down, we consistently get about 30 reactions per post. In a small town with little centralized media, we do rely heavily on Facebook to get the word out about our services and events. Facebook is also not made to use the way we are. There are certain types of posts where you cannot turn off comments and many functions that you then cannot use. I dream of the day when I can schedule posts again.

Last year when I was on the phone with ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, they told me that book banning seems to run in cycles. At that time, they figured that we had about 2 years left in this cycle, with things really ramping up ahead of the Presidential election. I hope and pray that they are right. Librarians are ready for this to be over. We are ready to expend all of our energy serving our communities rather than battling those that are trying to silence certain voices.