The Education Minister of Ontario has asked a school board west of Toronto to immediately stop its so-called “weeding” of school libraries after concerns were raided about how it was carrying out the process of assessing and removing older books.
Recently Education Minister Stephen Lecce said that he wrote to the Peel District School Board asking it to stop the process, a move which came after some Peel Region residents said libraries seemed to be removing books because they were published before 2008, based on new board guidelines.
Ontario is committed to ensure that the addition of new books better reflects the rich diversity of our societies. It is offensive, illogical and counterintuitive to remove books from years past which educates students on Canada’s history, antisemitism or celebrated literary classics. This was a statement written by Lecce.
But recently the board mentioned that regardless of publication date, older books which are exact, relevant to the student population, inclusive, not harmful and support the present curriculum may stay within schools.
PDSB teacher librarians have not been given the direction to remove all books published with a publication date older than 2008, nor has the board received provincial direction to remove certain books from our collections. This statement was written by the board’s director of education, Rashmi Swarup.
Certain books such as Harry Potter, The Diary of a Young Girl, yet remains in our collections and where needed, newer versions may be bought if the book is in poor condition.
The process of “weeding” library collections isn’t new and has been carried out to ensure collections are up-to-date and in good condition.
Swarup said that the Peel board follows library weeding guidelines set by the Canadian School Libraries Association and the board will be reviewing its training process to ensure consistency across schools.
The weeding and seeding, or replenishment, of school book collections has always been a part of the responsibilities for all teacher librarians within Peel District School Board and at school boards across Canada.
The Peel board guidelines on weeding appear to direct librarians to follow a three-step process, while the first one appearing to place a 15-year age limit on books in a collection.
Books are also to be judged for their physical condition and their circulation data is to be reviewed, according to details of the process shared by Ellard’s group.
The second and the third steps in the weeding guidelines direct librarians to remove books which may have misinformation, are misleading, or reinforce racist content or information which is not gender affirming.
Ellard said recently that a Peel Region landfill reached out to his group to say that they are looking to hire new staff just to help them destroy the large amounts of books which they receive. Since books are mixed media, the Hard covers have to be removed, the contain plastic materials and then the paper sources are being shredded. He also mentioned that this is the wholesale destruction of all of these fiction and non-fiction materials.
