State Media Lies about the Library, Part 3
Springfield News-Leader is famous for writing fiction. So, to help correct their narrative, I'm giving context to their misinformation about what happened at the Christian County Library Board.
Allyson Tuckness
Tuckness spoke to the News-Leader, but she told me before that the board members don’t talk to the press.
She has yet to reply to where in the guidebook the Board members are not allowed to be interviewed.
Tuckness has suppressed free speech and has used police to intimidate Public Commentators. She was removed from her position as President because she was Queen Tuckness. She was not there to preside (president) but to rule. She was hateful to the public and treated everyone like they were infants. She was often unprofessional and rude.
The News-Leader doesn’t tell you that, though.
Online Petition
The online petition doesn’t mean a lot, honestly. There are 90,000 citizens in Christian County. Anyone could sign an online petition. One hundred forty signatures is almost nothing in this situation. If we go by the data on the FB post I mentioned earlier, 292 people commented on FB supporting the changes at the Library. Gretchen’s article about the Library received over 1,000 views on her blog and my Substack. My article about the police incident received over 250 views on my substack, not listing the other locations.
The ALA is only one organization and not the best. It is an NGO that receives government funding, though it’s a private organization. It shouldn’t be given preferential treatment. Its newly elected leader is non-binary. If you don’t think this has an impact on the ALA policies, then you’re insane. The ALA is militantly anti-family, anti-Christian, and anti-values.
They love labels, though. Wear them proud: Trans, Non-Binary, Queer, Marxist, Gay, Poly, or Asexual.
Bolshevik
Tuckness is full of it. There are not a bajillion books. With the cataloging system, it is easy to identify books and find them by subject titles. You can locate the books that will likely have sexually exploitative material.
Further, the ALA releases book lists such as the Rainbow Reading List, which help librarians buy books like this with sexually exploitative material.
Tuckness is misleading the News-Leader and the public, and she knows it. She wants to be Queen Tuckness again.
Grassroots, it is Not.
The ALA supports U-Turn in Education. It is not grassroots. I go over their connections in this article. Elizabeth Dudash is a professor of Communication at Missouri State University. She has run for the Nixa School Board twice and lost both times. Her last run garnered maybe 12% of the vote, if I remember correctly.
How marginalized is this community? The News-Leader is supporting them. The largest newspaper in the community defends them. Gannett owns the News-Leader.
The ALA supports U-Turn in Education. The people I work with have no support from anyone. We’re just people with families, jobs, and no resources. We don’t have a website. We don’t have a 501(3)(c) like U-Turn. No one can donate to us and get a tax write-off. Currently, we are unaware if the ALA has funded U-Turn in Education.
In the non-profit world, 990’s are often up to three years delayed. Yet, if you go into my article, I highlight other support they have received. The News-Leader doesn’t tell you that.
The marginalized LGBT community that Dudash is so concerned about is protected by the ALA (a powerful government-funded NGO), the Springfield News-Leader (owned by Gannett worth $736M), and a professor at the most prominent local University.
The parents in the community are the ones who are told to shut up and not speak out or to have a voice. We are supposed to pretend that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of budding trans or gay youths budding under our noses in Christian County. If we don’t offer sexually exploitative material for them, they won’t flower in time for their great awakening.
Or maybe sexually exploitative material is needed to create more gay and trans youths, and they know it but won’t admit it.
Evergreen vs. MOBIUS
As we have been investigating the truth about MOBIUS and Cool Cat's costs, we have learned that they have cost the Christian County Library around $60,000 this year. However, you can’t separate MOBIUS from Cool Cat from the other. It appears we are overbudget in our MOBIUS/Cool Cat costs this year if you look at the numbers. If they continue at the rate of past expenses, the projected costs will be $100,000.
The Evergreen system would cost the library around $15,000 yearly, though the maximum that most libraries paid was around $20,000.
There is this lie circulating that if we lost access to academic library books, our community would be poorer for it. Only five public libraries in Missouri (including ours) even use MOBIUS. Despite this, resources are frequently brought from out of state as far away as North Carolina.
Missouri Evergreen is used by nearly half of all Missouri Public Libraries, many of which are mid-sized. We would have a network of 60 more public libraries than we currently have access to, a net benefit to families and individuals in the county. Acting like we need Academic resources as if we are an Academic Library is like a donkey acting like it belongs on a race track. Sometimes, it’s okay to be a Missouri mule.
Further, Camden Public Library reported that transferring their system only took six months. ED Brumett repeatedly says it takes two years, but the liberal board members back these claims. Why are ED Brumett and the Liberal Board members so lockstep in their messaging? Camden switched from MOBIUS to Evergreen in 2019 and has 25,000 more books circulating items than we do.
First, the percentage of patrons using hard-to-find academic materials seems unlikely to justify the $80,000 difference in cost per year.
Second, Academic libraries don’t share their entire collection. They often only allow a particular portion of their collection to be shared with other libraries. Reference materials and special collections don’t frequently get circulated. Some libraries won’t share books that are often circulated at a high rate within their system, such as textbooks.
Third, there is still Interlibrary Loan for hard-to-find books. This is a separate system from both MOBIUS and Evergreen.
Evergreen has been operational every month this past year. MOBIUS hasn’t worked for nearly five months now, and our library continues to pay for the service.
One of the most inane complaints is that the CCL patrons won’t be able to learn a new system. To find a book, all one has to do is search and request it. It’s a search and request. I’m sure our patrons can learn that system quite well. If our liberal trustees think our patrons are too stupid to learn how to do that, then it speaks to the issue that elites know best.
For more information on Evergreen, read these two articles here and here.
Elitism
Dudash is a perfect example of a person who thinks she knows best. She doesn’t believe Evergreen will work, but she hasn’t researched it. Dudash is simply confident because she knows best.
One of the things about what’s happened with those of us who have been coming to the library meetings is how educated we have become. We could run a library system now. We have given ourselves a degree in Library Science.
When we speak on these issues, we unsettle ED Brumett because she understands we have gained an insight into her system, which she thought belonged to her. The CCL was her private domain, and she could hide the functions of how it worked from the Board Trustees. This system allowed her and previous directors to get anything they wanted. Obfuscation and mystery worked well for her.
However, we have researched other libraries and talked to other librarians. We have spent hours of our lives digging through websites about Evergreen and MOBIUS. We’ve gone through legal documents and looked at the origin of Evergreen.
When ED Brumett, at one meeting, answered the board about how little she knew, we all spoke on Evergreen, embarrassing her with our wealth of knowledge. We made her look foolish.
We have done that multiple times in multiple areas of what was supposed to be a gnostic field called Library Science. Only the powerful and elite could gain this secret knowledge, and once you entered the mysteries, you didn’t share it.
The truth is that Library Science is something anyone can learn and do. It’s not that complicated. The basic philosophy is you’re a caretaker of a community’s knowledge and values.
In Christian County, ED Brumett hasn’t tried to do that, nor has Allyson Tuckness or Janis Hagen.
But will she? ED Brumett has been asked to present findings to the Board before and then showed up with nothing in hand. Time will tell.
And it’s Brumett, not Brummett News-Leader.
I am so grateful to learn about all of this library business. I often ask about the lack of labels on books. The book choices are many and my time is limited so why can't they add labels like they used to? I can't be alone in this. More and more books are showing up on the shelves without labels.
As concerned as I am about parents and children being alerted to a books content, there are other reasons for labeling books and all of them are helpful. We can always pick up a book to look inside even if it has a label but if a label tells me it is of a topic I am not interested in, I usually wouldn't because I know I'm not interested and don't want to even be exposed to what is in there.
It's different with the kids. Those books do need to be labeled and moved to shelving that is also labeled. It also should be out-of-reach for younger eyes. Has anyone brought up the correlation with MOVIES? We label them with warnings or labels as to their content. I just went to B & B Theater's website and saw that this morning. We even restrict movies to be viewed by younger audiences unless they are with an adult. It's the same thing we'd like to see happen in our libraries. I hope someone runs with this idea if they haven't already.
I'm also thankful to learn more about Evergreen and about the high cost of Mobius. I still don't pretend to know enough about making those decisions but for goodness sake, why are we having to pay for services during the months they are not providing any??? Ugh!
Anyway, thanks for all you do, David! Congratulations to Echo, too!
Really enjoyed the comparison of library science to gnostic knowledge. Thank you.