The Library Bill of Rights
Since 1939, the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights has defined what a public library owes its community: access for everyone, resistance to censorship, meeting rooms open on an equitable basis, and privacy in what you read. These seven principles are the standard we organize by, and the standard we ask Timberland Regional Library's board and administration to uphold in every decision about branches, staffing, and service.
The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.
- 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.
- 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.
- Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
- Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
- A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
- 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.
- All people, regardless of origin, age, background, or views, possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use. Libraries should advocate for, educate about, and protect people's privacy, safeguarding all library use data, including personally identifiable information.
Washington's library trustees are expected to know and apply these principles — they appear throughout the Washington State Library's trustee resources, alongside the governance and finance tools (including levy lid lifts) that boards use to keep library doors open.