Collection Policies and Requests for Reconsideration in Academic Libraries – a Kansas Perspective

Sound collections policy is essential for the efficient creation and management of any collection (Johnson, 2018). This is true in general from a purely practical viewpoint but becomes increasingly important philosophically in a time when there is a huge increase in challenges to specific library materials (ALA, 2024). Academic libraries have traditionally considered their role to be to provide materials for study from a wide variety of viewpoints with often conflicting understandings, and although they have a long history of using collections policy to guide their acquisitions (Johnson, 2018) they have much less experience of requiring policy to fend off challenges to selected materials. Bell (2022), however, suggests that academic libraries need to be more prepared to face materials challenges in the light of emerging censorship trends occurring at the individual level as well as within state legislatures. This paper explores the prevalence of collections policy in the public, four-year academic institutions in Kansas and, in particular, looked to see if there is policy information provided on requests for reconsideration of library materials. It also looked at how much of this policy is easily accessible online and therefore immediately available to members of the university and others. The paper concludes with suggestions for strengthening existing policy in this area as well as other preemptive actions that can be taken to ensure the integrity of library collections against threats of censorship.