Hello everyone,
Thank you for your incredible support as we fight to restore youth and teen programs to the Pickens County Library System.
As we approach the March 19th Board meeting and continue our dialogue with County Council, I am making a strategic shift in the focus of this petition. This is not a change in our core mission, but a refinement of how we demand the Board fix this crisis.
The Reality: The Current System is Already Failing We must concede one point: the current library classification has had errors. We have found Adult series (like A Court of Thorns and Roses) mislabeled as Juvenile. However, the Board’s current "vague" policy and the library’s "manual audit" are not the solution. Manual audits are slow, expensive (wasting $160,000 in taxpayer wages), and subjective.
The Focus Shift: Data-Driven, Not Opinion-Driven We are now specifically petitioning for a Metadata-Driven Audit Policy. Instead of a small group of people deciding what is "appropriate" based on personal ideology, we are demanding the library use the SCLENDS metadata infrastructure we already pay for. This system uses objective, industry-standard data from publishers and vendors (like Ingram and Brodart) to place books exactly where they belong:
Adult books go to the Adult section.
Young Adult books stay in the Teen section.
Juvenile books stay in the Kids' section.
Why This Matters:
Objectivity: It removes the "Heckler’s Veto" where one person’s opinion can shut down a whole program.
Efficiency: A metadata audit happens in the background. We can fix the catalog and restore youth programs immediately rather than waiting months for a manual review.
Legal Protection: Following professional metadata protects our county from the $89,000 legal settlements we've seen in places like the Mat-Su Borough.
We are still fighting for our librarians and our children. We are just giving the Board the objective, data-driven "baseline" they need to do their jobs without interference.
If you have any questions about this shift, please reach out. If you no longer wish to support this specific direction, you can remove your signature via the link in your original confirmation email. Let’s get our programs back!