News Photo by Temi Fadayomi Jessica Luther, assistant director of the Alpena County Library, assists a patron at the library on Tuesday.

ALPENA — The Alpena County Library currently has no plans to implement new standards, despite a petition circulating in the community calling on them to do so, according to library officials.

“We have policies and procedures in place for selecting, and we follow best practices that all libraries across the country follow,” Jessica Luther, assistant director of the library, said Tuesday. “We have our own professional standards that we follow.”

Many parents and concerned residents have signed a petition calling on the library to establish community-determined “age-appropriate” standards for books after backers of the petition compiled a list of books they deemed inappropriate found on the children’s and young adult shelves at the library.

Luther said the library respects a parent’s desire to monitor and curate what their child reads, but, rather than a mandatory standard of book selection, concerned parents can instead work with library staff to help navigate them or their child to the books that they believe are right for them.

“The library respects that there are some topics parents are not comfortable with their child being exposed to,” Luther said in an email. “Our trained staff will gladly help anyone find material that best meets their family’s needs. We can also direct parents and caregivers to resources where other parents with similar viewpoints have reviewed items that may be of interest.”

According to Luther, the library selects its books based on various criteria, such as popularity and current literary trends. Where those books are then placed is based on existing publishing standards.

“Our staff of trained professionals select and purchase books based on various criteria: reviews by professional reviewers, buzz around the title, relevance to current trends and community needs, and general interest are just a few things we consider,” Luther said. “We place books and materials in the different sections of the library based on publishing standards.”

Luther said that Alpena is a diverse community and that the book selection needs to properly reflect that. She said the library staff are professionally trained and more than capable of selecting books appropriate for the community.

“We are professionally trained here,” Luther said. “It is our job to select these books for the community. We try to make sure we have books for everyone in the library. Alpena is far more diverse than people expect, so we try to make sure we have materials that suit every interest, and every level of reading. We serve everyone in the community.”

The petition thrusts Alpena into a national conversation about which belongs where in public and school libraries and whether some books belong on such shelves at all. The American Library Association reported recently that 4,240 books had been challenged in 2023 at public and school libraries, a record, and that 40% of challenges targeted books at public libraries.