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Sweet Briar College Libraries acquire each year a small percentage
of the world's volume of publications. In selecting materials for
inclusion in our collections, we attempt first to acquire those items
which relate to college programs and hence will support the college's
goals in instruction, research, and service.
Beyond this, we attempt
to represent to some degree the entire span of humanity's cultural
heritage. Disciplines and languages not taught at the college are
represented selectively. The entire range of human cultural practice,
of science and pseudo-science, and of religious, political, ethnic,
and social expression is welcome in our collections insofar as representative
materials may be acquired with scarce resources. To build our collections
with any other goal in mind would be to ignore both the root and
the deeper meaning of our mission statement.
While we do not acquire
materials purely for their prurient interest, our selection practices
necessarily recognize that eroticism is often an integral part of
many forms of cultural expresion and that human sexuality is an
important area of study for both the biological and social sciences.
Once any library materials
have been acquired, our concern is to make them available to as
many patrons as may want them. As educators in a democracy, we must
have faith in our patrons to identify and select those materials
most beneficial to their purposes. We are entirely in accord with
the principles of intellectual freedom expressed in the American
Library Association's "Library Bill of Rights" and supporting documents
in chapter 53 of the ALA Policy Manual, including the rejection
of practices denying or restricting access to materials or labelling
materials.
Common sense and our practical
experience have indicated that theft and mutilation of library materials
dealing with sexuality is common. For this reason, we have chosen
to place on Reserve some materials deemed to be at risk. Here they
may be protected from theft and damage, along with a variety of
other, nonerotic materials which have been found to be vulnerable
to theft and mutilation.
Adapted
from policy statement developed by Virginia Polytechnic and State
University Approved: 31 January 1992
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