Managing Public Comment Sessions

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Today's intellectual freedom challenges play out not in written form but in public comment sessions. They follow a pretty specific script: organized, coordinated, inflammatory, vindictive, and alarmingly persistent. Speaker Jamie LaRue, who has dealt with over 1,000 challenges in his 44-year career, will unpack the censorship script and provide clear rules and tools for conducting a thoughtful and balanced public comment period. This will be useful for anyone who attends or strategizes around public meetings: directors, staffers, board members, and library advocates. By the end of the session, attendees will:

• Understand the strategy of those seeking to limit access to library resources
• Have a template for managing the registration for public comment
• Have an opening script for setting ground rules
• Have an opportunity to ask questions or describe other institutional challenges

Presenter

Jamie LaRue recently retired as the director of the Garfield County Public Library District in Western Colorado. The author of two books: On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture in the US and The New Inquisition: Understanding and Managing Intellectual Freedom Challenges, Jamie has been a Public Library Director for many years, as well as a weekly newspaper columnist and cable TV host. From January 2016 to November 2018, he was director of ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, and the Freedom to Read Foundation.