Officially titled “Guidelines for the Development of Policies and Procedures regarding User Behavior and Library Usage.”
In the wake of the 1991 district court decision in Kreimer v. Bureau of Police for the Town of Morristown et al., a case involving a challenge to regulations implemented by the Morristown, New Jersey, public library, the Intellectual Freedom Committee recognized a need for guidance in the development of library policies governing patron behavior.1 At the 1991 ALA Annual Conference in Atlanta, the committee established a task force to draft guidelines. The task force was charged with seeking expert legal advice in developing suggestions to assist local libraries in reviewing or drafting policies to deal with problem patrons that would meet constitutional standards. From the very beginning, the Intellectual Freedom Committee recognized that it would be impossible to present a set of model regulations, because the legal considerations governing actual behavior in differing jurisdictions vary. Instead, the committee took the approach of providing a constitutional framework and encouraging libraries to consider carefully local statutory law that might apply to particular patron-behavior situations.
The task force, chaired by then Public Library Association IFC Chair Candace Morgan, presented a draft at the 1992 Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio. In presenting the draft to the committee, Morgan explained that it was based almost entirely on advice obtained from the ALA and the Freedom to Read Foundation’s legal counsel firm Jenner and Block. The committee also sponsored an open hearing at that Midwinter Meeting to receive additional comments on the draft from librarians. Despite explanations of why it would be unwise and probably impossible to provide a model set of rules, many librarians who testified and offered comments requested more specificity. Following the hearing, the task force met and agreed that, although it would be difficult to promulgate specific regulations within the context of widely varying local and state law, the task force could address the need for specificity by highlighting the necessity to refer to that local law.
The text of these guidelines is published in the Intellectual Freedom Manual, ninth edition (2015), part I, chapter 3.
The task force also decided to address, in a similar, general way, health and safety regulations, equal access concerns, civil rights and due process, and so forth. Reference to staff training was also added. Another open forum was held at the 1992 Annual Conference in San Francisco to receive additional comment on a revised draft addressing these issues.
Throughout the development of the guidelines, the library community continued to discuss the Kreimer v. Morristown case. The Intellectual Freedom Committee and the task force to develop the guidelines took great pains to inform the library community that the guidelines were not meant as a specific response to the Kreimer case. The subject of the task force’s hearings was not the Kreimer case but the draft guidelines, which went far beyond the facts of that dispute. The task force stressed that it was attempting to provide a constitutional framework in which libraries could proceed in the development of their own regulations regarding user behavior of all types, not just the conduct addressed by the rules of the Morristown library that were challenged in the litigation.
However, because questions and misunderstandings persisted about the legal issues involved, Judge H. Lee Sarokin, the federal district court judge who rendered the original opinion in the Kreimer v. Morristown case, appeared at the 1992 Annual Conference in San Francisco to speak generally about those legal issues. The reception he received was mixed. Some librarians in the audience were unfamiliar with the legal principles involved and were concerned that the ruling would make it impossible for libraries to adopt and enforce rules of behavior they believed necessary for accomplishing their mission.
During and following the 1992 conference, the task force, working with Patricia Tumulty, executive director of the New Jersey Library Association, continued to work on the draft guidelines. They particularly took into consideration the ruling of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which established the general principle that library users have a First Amendment right to receive information in a public library and public libraries have the right to set reasonable patron behavior codes related to their missions.2 The intent was to make the guidelines as broad and general as possible so that local libraries would have a framework in which to formulate their own rules with reference to local circumstances, state and local law, and constitutional principles. The task force continued to stress that the guidelines did not, and were not intended to, constitute an ALA response to the Kreimer decision. The IFC voted to approve the revised draft and to circulate it once again for additional comment.
After editorial revisions in light of additional comments, the IFC adopted the final version of “Guidelines for the Development of Policies and Procedures regarding User Behavior and Library Usage” and presented it for information to the ALA Council at the 1993 Midwinter Meeting in Denver.
In line with the ongoing practice of periodic review, the IFC carefully reviewed all statements in 1999–2000, especially in regard to their applicability to the Internet. The IFC recommended only slight editorial changes to this policy, with one exception. The IFC added language indicating that any restrictions on library access “must provide a clear description of the behavior that is prohibited and the various enforcement measures in place” [new language in bold], to make it clearer that not only should a fair warning measure be in place, but also a means for due process.
During the periodic review of 2004–5 the term “equitable” was added to the phrase “equal treatment under the law” in the first paragraph.
During its 2014 review of intellectual freedom documents, the Intellectual Freedom Committee revised these guidelines to strengthen their applicability to all types of libraries. The committee also added new language to indicate that policies and regulations that impose restrictions on library access “should not be used to limit library users’ access to constitutionally protected speech that may be considered controversial or objectionable.”