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The West Bend library controversy of 2009 was part of a larger conservative movement critical of Young Adult (YA) literature and the American Library Association. Organizations such as Family Friendly Libraries and the American Family Association leveraged community and parental fears about teens' reading to target public library policies supporting intellectual freedom for youth. Ginny Maziarka and her husband Jim participated in conservative library activism by drawing information and resources from other organizations and by serving as an inspiration to would-be library activists. Their critiques of YA literature and of ALA policies defending youth access propelled them into a community battle contesting the purpose and mission of the public library.
In 2009, Ginny and Jim Maziarka wrote a letter protesting a list of GLBTQ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer) titles for teens featured on the West Bend Community Memorial Library's website, and later formally challenged thirty-seven books, most of them Young Adult (YA) fiction (Pekoll, 2009). As part of the materials-reconsideration process, the Maziarkas met with YA librarian Kristin Pekoll, who had prepared for the event with positive reviews of the challenged books. However, the Maziarkas were not interested in discussing individual titles; rather, they wished to discuss "the general concept of homosexual books for youth." Self-described conservative Ginny Maziarka later complained on her blog, WISSUP=Wisconsin Speaks Up, that Pekoll's attention to youth requests was unfair because "children do not pay taxes, so obviously their requests and desires do not trump the taxpayers [sic]." She went on to accuse Pekoll of bias and even censorship, claiming she was "censoring books for our young adults according to her personal belief system." Maziarka ended her post by declaring that "we expect our public library to protect children and empower parents to decide what their children can read" (Maziarka, 2009e).
Maziarka's challenge and the rhetoric she used to describe it were not unique. The West Bend controversy was part of a larger network of conservative library activist challenges that targeted library policies rather than individual titles, wielding principles of access and diversity in support of an alternate vision of the public library as a "safe" and protectionist institution. From the early 1990s to the present day, organizations such as Family Friendly Libraries, the American Family Association,...