The More You Know: CPS Secondary Library Roles & Procedures

Welcome to Cabot Public School District’s Secondary Library Media Centers

The Cabot Public School District is fortunate to have library media centers staffed with experts whose purpose is to help today’s readers become tomorrow’s leaders. There are over 75,000 books available for checkout in our secondary libraries. We would like to share with our patrons some information to give a more thorough insight into how today’s libraries are managed. 

The Role of Cabot Public Schools’ Library Media Centers

• Educating all students to be respectful, responsible citizens
• Supporting research in all content areas 
• Providing access to technology 
• Offering materials to help students explore and pursue postsecondary opportunities, and
• Encouraging students to become life-long readers.

Criteria Used for Selecting Materials in the Library Media Centers

The list below includes, but is not limited to, the criteria used to select materials: 

• Overall purpose and educational significance
• High degree of potential user appeal including varied interests that reflect religious, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds
• Representation of opposing sides of controversial issues
• Age appropriateness is ensured by the use of professionally-vetted book review journals 

Questions About Materials in Your Student’s Library Media Center

It is important to note that we realize that not every book in the media center is appropriate for every student. However, we want there to be a book for every student that enters the library media center. Our teacher librarians are dedicated to providing our students access to books that are appropriate for their needs. We want to ensure our parents that they do have the right to choose and/or limit what their student can access and that students are not required to check-out books from our library. 

• Parents can request that their student not check out certain materials by contacting the school teacher librarian via email listing the titles and/or genres they do not want their student to access. 
• Parents can challenge a title in the collection of their student’s school that they deem unacceptable for all students. 

Our teacher librarians may not remove titles from library shelves without appropriate due process. It has been ruled unconstitutional to remove a title without first following the district’s challenge/reconsideration policy. In fact, Arkansas Statute 6-25-105 requires that districts have a defined policy for selecting materials and challenging titles in Arkansas Public School Libraries. 

For more information about your school’s library media center, we welcome you to contact the school’s library media specialist which can be found on the district website.