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As part of an ongoing school policy project, USA TODAY in Pennsylvania tested how library rules have changed in some districts under the pressure of a culture war focused largely on LGBTQ issues.
With 500 school districts across the commonwealth, the network’s reporters used the help of an automated web scraper to comb through a document-hosting web portal called BoardDocs.
BoardDocs is popular with government agencies and about 440 school districts in Pennsylvania use the site to post policy documents and assemblies online.
A similar scraper was used for a report on school districts that in particular identified transgender academics in their policies, whether it was an undeniable anti-discrimination policy or a more comprehensive set of rules covering harassment down to personal life.
For this article, reporters wanted to learn how library policies have changed in recent years, identify districts that had more restrictive policies and ones that held to standards from groups like the American Library Association.
Coming up with a definitive list of library policies is more complicated than it seems.
For example, a search of a district’s BoardDocs for “library policy” will in many cases yield no results.
More: Only a handful of Pa. school districts have policies protecting trans students
Districts commonly title their library policies as some variation of “resource materials” or “library materials,” but those same terms might also include cross-referenced citations found in other policies.
Policy books are also often divided into numbered sections, with section 000 referring to school board rules, section 100 on pupils and so on. It’s not uncommon to find a library policy numbered 109, but it’s also not a standard rule in policy organizing.
Read more: From Libraries to Locker Rooms: How One Law Firm Is Turning Pennsylvania’s School Policies Forward
More search terms from the library policies displayed were used to eventually expand a list of policies in approximately 420 school districts, approximately 84% of all districts, and approximately 95% of districts using BoardDocs.
Although a long list of districts has been created for this article, it is not an exhaustive review of the Pennsylvania School District’s library policy.
In addition to districts that don’t use BoardDocs, a missing keyword, a misspelling on the website, or any other technical error may have simply ignored a district that has been included.
Because of those uncertainties, USA TODAY decided to focus on what parents and students are looking for if they have questions about their school’s library policy.
This article appeared in Bucks County Courier Times: How PA School District 400 Library Policy Data Was Collected
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