11:55
- ABC News
- August 2, 2023
Library chief on challenge to new Arkansas law
Nate Coulter spoke to "START HERE."
11:55
MIELKE: So it's no longer just a children's wing of the library, but like, let's enforce not letting anyone come in the adult section?
COULTER: Yes, right. It was basically, if it's available – and the state could not answer the judge's questions about, what does it mean? It’s on the shelf, but the book’s not open, but it's just on the shelf and it contains sexually graphic descriptions, as many, many books do in our culture – is that making it available and subjecting the library staff to criminal charges? The state didn't have an answer for that, because the statute is so vague.
MIELKE: And as far as the criminal prosecutions would go, does that mean that under this statute – I assume police are not investigating the shelves – does it mean, like, parent or whoever, some random activist, could just call up the police and say, “Hey, that librarian is letting kids check out these books, arrest that man”?
COULTER: Right, wouldn’t even have to check the book out. If the book is in our library and someone goes to the prosecuting attorney and says, “They've got a copy of a book that describes teenage sex in a way that I don't think is appropriate” – just take, for example, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Barbara Kingsolver, “Demon Copperhead.” It has descriptions of teenage sex. If someone says, “That book shouldn't be in a library where children are there, because they're minors. That could be harmful to my 5-year-old, my 8-year-old. I don't want my child to be exposed to that.”
Under the statute, until the judge enjoined it, yes, any librarian could have been subjected to prosecution if a parent or someone complaining about it had made the case that they could have been brought up on charges of presenting or making available content that's harmful to a minor.
MIELKE: Do you have a plan in place if this injunction was lifted, if this became law very soon? Is there a plan for you to block off wings or clear the shelves of certain books or whatever?
COULTER: Part of the reason for bringing the lawsuit, in addition to being told by expert First Amendment lawyers that it was unconstitutional, was there was no way to give my staff comfort or advice about how to avoid being theoretically exposed to incarceration. So we had no plan for trying to deal with Section One. We weren't going to exclude minors from our library. We weren't going to quit buying books that adults have a right to.
MIELKE: Like, you hadn't hired security guards to keep the kids out or something?
COULTER: Well, one of the things that I told the board, I said, it’s impractical. For example, something that we now are all becoming familiar with in the culture, you know, state marijuana dispensaries, where there are police at the door, there are all sorts of checks. We have 150,000 square feet in the main library where I'm sitting today, hundreds of thousands of books. Were we supposed to put someone, a staff member, at every aisle?
If you saw a 7-year-old wandering away from her parent, you had to steer that child away? It's not feasible to have that much staff to police the access to these books that might be deemed harmful to minors.
And if they're made available, if they're on the shelf, as the state conceded, that's theoretically making it available. In a society, in a democracy like ours, we acquire books for a wide diversity of readers and we acquire books with diverse viewpoints.
There was a colloquy in the court ¬– we have copies of “Mein Kampf” in the library. That obviously doesn't mean that I and the other people who are involved in running the library endorse the author's antisemitic viewpoints. But that's a book that we consider to be, as most libraries probably around America consider to be, an important part of Western history and the collection needs to have it.
So there aren’t judgments being made about the content of these books, but we think that's the judgment that the people who've initiated this kind of law want. They want books out that they don't like.
And we say, “Look, don't read them. Don’t let your children read them. Be engaged in what your children are doing. We want children to read. We want them to read what they want to read. We want them to read what you want them to read. But we don't want you telling what somebody else's children can read.”
MIELKE: I do wonder, though, if the argument to that is, you have these parents who are upset by the idea – not just that their kid has the opportunity to find books that they have viewpoints they might not agree with, but that these books might also be offered or evangelized to their kid by that helpful librarian or by that helpful bookstore owner who's like, “Hey, you might enjoy this book,” or “Hey, you're 17 or you're 15 or you're 12. I don't know what ¬– you know – but like, you seem old enough for this.” And that that ends up being something that they're profoundly uncomfortable with. I mean, does that resonate with you at all?
COULTER: When people tell – and I try to respect that, when I hear that – I ask them to come visit me, meet me at one of our branches. Let's walk through the library. Let's let you watch, observe what happens. Typically what happens, and this is ancient. I mean, when I was a child in small town south Arkansas, and I would go to the library with my mother, she would tell the librarian, “He's interested in sports books. He's interested in history books for children, for, you know, young adults,” – what librarians call them. And the librarian in the small town would keep track of what books were coming in. She'd call my mother and they'd take me in.
So the parent in that model, which is not unusual, will express to the librarian, or in the case of the older child, the child will tell the librarian. Or in a democracy, with people having the freedom to make their own choices, the child may just browse around, like a lot of us do in a library, looking to see what authors we know and like.
I’ve raised three kids. I worried a lot more about what my kids were doing with their devices or with the access they had to the internet than I ever worried about them in the library. Because, back to the other point, librarians are not there saying, “Hey, have you thought about this? Have you read books about transgender you might like?” They don't do that. They do not do that. And that’s an absolute malignment of public librarians to suggest that librarians are grooming.
I've been accused of being a groomer. Or that they are doing things to drive an agenda.
The only agenda librarians have, most of whom are introverts, by and large, is to help people find whatever resource they want that they think will enhance and enrich their lives and help them reach their potential. They don't have an agenda. They're not trying to sell, you know, Nikole Hannah Jones’ 1619 to the child who's working on a high school history paper.
They say, “What's your topic? How can I help you? What would you be interested in? Here’s some books on the subject matter of World War II. Here's some books on slavery or systemic racism.” They are not telling children, “This is what you ought to read if you want to try this out. I'll help you.” It's just not at all the way it happens.
So, there is a huge misperception or misinformation being driven by the people who want to brandish librarians as somehow sexualizing children or creating alternatives for the values that the child's parents may have. That's just not happening.
MIELKE: Really interesting. And the point you were making about the phone and evolving technology over the last – ‘cause I always wonder what's changed in the last five, 10, 20 years – you got to think that that phone might be one of the reasons that people feel like they just don't have enough control over what kids nowadays see.
Nate Colter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System in Little Rock, the lead plaintiff on this lawsuit that’s been blocked now temporarily. Thank you so much for making the time for us.
COULTER: Thank you, Brad.
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