Dothan Houston County librarians must now place books with visual depictions of sex behind the circulation desk for adult access only.

The library board met Wednesday to vote on collection development policy changes and address book challenges that have sprung up since September, library director Chris Warren said.

The policy changes include curating a “limited access collection” behind the circulation desk for adults 19 or older for any titles that have “visually explicit depictions of people engaged in sexual activity.” A staff member will assist patrons who want to check out books from this collection. It’s not clear how many of the library’s existing collection may be moved.

The only book out of 21 challenges from 2023 that fits this policy in Dothan Houston’s collection is “Gender Queer,” a 2019 visual memoir by Maia Kobabe describing the author’s journey through sexual identity. According to PEN America, an organization tracking and opposing book bans, Kobabe’s book was the most banned in the United States last year.

Warren said the board has been “very thoughtful and responsive” to the community’s concerns as well as considerations of him and his staff.

“We tried to talk about what’s actually practical and what’s feasible,” Warren said. “We consulted with our legal counsel and what we’ve adopted this morning is measured. It’s appropriate. It’s responsive and it’s defensible, and I’m very proud of our trustees and very proud of our staff for being as mindful and thoughtful as they have.”

The age threshold matches the policy of another collection called the “Library of Things,” which has physical items available to check out, like a leaf blower or a power washer.

Warren doesn’t have estimates for how long it will take to assess the collection of 140,000 items across three physical branches, a bookmobile and an eBook collection. However, he said he and his staff can handle the request to limit access to certain material. He is working on a plan for their eBook collection.

“It’s not that we are going to intentionally try to build this collection. That’s not what this is about,” Warren said. He added that the Board of Trustees has been “very communicative, very solution-oriented,” and this process required hours of deliberation and research on possible solutions.

“There’s a great deal of misinformation surrounding all of these controversies in libraries right now,” Warren said. “It’s important that people understand there’s a difference between content that’s sexually explicit and content that’s pornographic. Librarians, by and large, are very thoughtful, very conscientious, very community-minded people and we take all of these decisions very seriously. No one is grooming children. No one is sexualizing children. We’re just trying to do our best to be representative of and of service to the diverse communities that we serve.”

The board also added a section to its reconsideration policy to specify that if a patron is unhappy with a decision made by the reconsideration committee, they can submit a written appeal to the board within 10 business days.

“We wanted to be able to provide some clarity and some transparency as to exactly what that process looks like,” Warren said. For each reconsideration request, the director appoints a committee of three library employees to review the item in question in its entirety.

He hopes patrons will be happy with these changes.

“I hope they’ll see that we have a board of volunteers who understand this community, who understand that there are always going to be competing interests, but also understanding that there are things we can do to ensure that we are responsive to the concerns that we get,” Warren said. “I hope people see that we are really doing the best that we can. We’ve not been dismissive of the concerns that we’ve heard. We’ve taken them very seriously and I hope that people will be satisfied with the solution that we’ve reached.”