LIVINGSTON, La. — No action was taken Tuesday by the Livingston Parish Library Board of Control on a request to reclassify This One Summer, an award-winning graphic novel currently shelved in the teen section, as board members voted to table the issue until a future meeting.
This One Summer, a coming-of-age graphic novel housed in the teen’s nonfiction section of local library branches, is the center of the newest push-back from organizations concerned with age-rating book contents. Originally published in 2014, This One Summer has won both a Caldecott Medal and a Gran Guinigi award for Best Script; two honors reserved for ‘only the most outstanding graphic novels and picture books.’
However, the book was reported for consideration of ‘reclassification’ by a library patron per the library’s new guidelines, therefore the board must take it up for a vote. Several individuals arrived at the meeting sporting all manner of purple shirts, hats, coats, and jewelry in a show of support against the book’s reclassification.
When the item of the book’s potential reclassification was called, the meeting room was met with silence as the board members looked between each other and down at the singular copy of the book that one of the members had brought to the meeting.
Board member Patricia Wilson spoke up first to ask that the request be tabled until the next meeting on account of the fact that “we have not had the opportunity to actually read the book.” As “there’s only one [copy] in circulation in our system, we haven’t had time to get them - they’ve been requested from other libraries but… it takes a couple of weeks.”
While Wilson had “looked at reviews” of the novel, she adamantly proclaimed that she was “not gonna make a decision on somebody else’s opinion… I want to read a book for myself and make the decision based on my opinion of how it aligns with the law.”
Board member Sheila Goins seconded that motion while also calling for a future re-working of the policy manual where people submit their complaint over the book they want the board to discuss. She asked the board whether the manual will be better if they “include the page numbers, where they find, you know, the information they disagree with.”
“I would like to read the entire book,” Goins assured, “but I think that would help too so we could, you know, know what they would be referring to [in the complaints].”
While no definitive action was taken regarding the suggestion of the changes to the manual, the board did pass a vote to table the reclassification request until the next library board meeting. Afterwards, the board members moved towards discussing several monetary decisions and usage statistics for the branches.
In the past, the Library Board had put extra funds into CDs (low-risk deposits of lump sums for fixed terms with guaranteed fixed interest rates) for, as board member Wilson described, “future building growth… but as the years have passed the interest rates have gone down and it’s no longer a good investment.”
With the CDs as they are now, Wilson made it clear that they are only receiving between “2.5% interest” and “1% interest” back on the board’s investments which can cause issues considering the library board needs “to have at least six months of liquid funds in case something catastrophic happens.”
Wilson proposed that, “as these [CDs] mature… we roll them into our Capital Outlay account temporarily while we look and see where else we can put them.”
Louisiana Asset Management Pool (LAMP) was offered by Wilson as a potential solution with their “interest rate at 3.79%, so almost 4%” as of January 16th. “That’s a big increase from the 2.5%,” she added.
LAMP is, essentially, like a savings account “for governmental agencies in Louisiana… so you can get [the funds] and use them with no penalty but yet you’re still drawing interest while sitting there waiting.”
The board ultimately decided to take the CDs that are coming to the end of their fixed term and close them off from renewing so they can put the funds into the Capital Outlay account for the time being. At the next meeting, the board will discuss where they think is best to reinvest the funds for 2026.
Following this, the new director, Na’chel Shannon, provided the usage statistics for the library in 2025 which show both increases and decreases in several key areas of library services and resources.
Traffic count decreased 5.51%
Computer use increased 4.67%
Wireless usage increased 4.89%
Total Library Events decreased 0.37%
Meeting Room Bookings increased 56.27%
Meeting Room Attendance increased 14.48%
Total Collection usage decreased 9.68%
Shannon ended her report by letting the board know that “due to federal cuts to the State Library budget, we can no longer request inter-library loan materials from outside of the state of Louisiana.”
Afterwards, the meeting wrapped up with a discussion on adding some new employee conduct rules and the disciplinary actions to be implemented in the event of rule breakage.
The two rules were listed by Assistant Director Dustin Cotton who specified that “sharing staff specific credentials for any computer system software or facility hardware does compromise security accountability and is now a disciplinary action.” Additionally, “allowing non-staff members to use staff only workstations, which creates a security hazard, is also disciplinary, up to a firing for full offense.”
Board member Jennifer Dorhauer asked if the first rule “covers the use of AI” and “what we, and our employees, are and aren’t allowed to feed into AI.”
Cotton explained that the library board does not currently have an AI policy but that it is “something that probably needs to be created this year, given the circumstances.”
The board members discussed adding the item of creating an AI policy to a future meeting and, for the meantime, unanimously voted to adopt the two new employee conduct rules.
