Bills Would Require Libraries Automatically Notify Parents of Kids' Check Outs

Thursday, November 30th, 2023 -- 5:00 PM

(Bob Hague, WRN) Library advocates raise concerns that requiring libraries to automatically notify parents every time their kids check something out would be overly burdensome.

The bills requiring that for school and public libraries are from Republican state Representative Barbara Dittrich. "I think people have ascribed some motives to these these pieces of legislation that aren't necessarily there. We want parental engagement. And our goal in this legislation is not to further inflame the issue, but to bring the temperature down."

Representative Dittrich continued, “It gives us this opportunity to monitor what kids are checking out both in the school and the public libraries. And it’s not book banning. Your child unsupervised right now can go into one of our public libraries with a self checkout and checkout an R rated film without your knowledge even. Which shocked me. And I don't think we want our eight year olds doing that.”

The bills would require libraries send notices within 24 hours of kids checking out books and other items. State law already allows parents to request information on what their children under the age of 16 check out.

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