[Publib] Supreme Court & church meeting in library

[Mary Soucie]

I agree with Diedre's comments about not judging content. A few years ago, we had a group book the meeting room to discuss sightings of UFO's and Big Foot. (One of the most attended events held here by a non-library group BTW.) Standing room only showed this to be a topic our public, or someone's public at any rate, was interested in. We tried hard not to judge the people attending the meeting. :-)
 
Mary J. Soucie, MLIS
Library Director
Wilmington Public Library District
Visit the world @ your library(tm)
201 S Kankakee St, Wilmington IL 60481
815-476-2834 Phone
815-476-7805 Fax
mailto:mjsoucie at wilmingtonlibrary.org <mailto:mjsoucie at wilmingtonlibrary.org> 

________________________________

From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of Diedre Conkling
Sent: Sat 6/30/2007 11:53 AM
To: PUBLIB
Subject: Re: [Publib] Supreme Court & church meeting in library



I think I agree with letting the church group meet in the library and would agree with the Supreme Court if they came to this conclusion. 

Most of us have policies that allow groups to meet as long as their meetings are free and open to the public and they are not selling something.  We don't restrict on the basis of  program content.

We often have restrictions like only being able to reserve the meeting room once a month or something like this that really is not compatible with the weekly needs of a church but does work for some special events.  This does keep the library from being the regular meeting place for a church, which also seems appropriate.  To be honest, I think that I would have a hard time knowing which meetings might have some religious or spiritual content sometimes.  There are so many variations that I can't keep up.  Just letting groups meet if they fill out the form, are open to the public, and clean up the room when they leave is enough work for me.  Judging the content of the events just takes more time and energy than I have.


--
Diedre Conkling
    
  Lincoln County Library District
  P.O. Box 2027, Newport, OR  97365
  Phone & Fax:  541-265-3066
  http://lcld.library-blogs.net/
  Work:  diedre at beachbooks.org
  Home:  diedrec at charter.net
  

---- Mary Donley <marydonley at yahoo.com> wrote:

=============
With Bush's Supreme Court, they will probably win
on further appeal.  The article says they have the
backing of the Bush admin.  When I was in library
school, our fake example of meeting room use was the
Hell's Angels applying to use the room.  They should
have picked a church!

Mary

--- Sue Kamm <suekamm at mindspring.com> wrote:


> Here's a link to the AMERICAN LIBRARIES story:
> http://tinyurl.com/2mek3d
>
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