From left: Judy Calhoun, John McGraw and Misty Hawkins listen to discussion of Senate Bill 181 during a meeting of the House Committee on City, County, and Local Affairs on Wednesday, February 26, 2025. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
An Arkansas House committee approved a bill Wednesday that would loosen the current education requirement for local public library directors.
If Senate Bill 181 becomes law, library directors would no longer need a master’s degree in library science “from an accredited American Library Association program” in order for libraries to receive state funding. It would allow someone with “work experience in the field of library operations” but without the requisite degree to run a library or the Arkansas State Library with approval from its governing board.
Three regional library directors spoke against the bill before the House Committee on City, County, and Local Affairs. All three said they have the current required education and that SB 181 is unnecessary.
“It’s deeply concerning and frankly a bit disrespectful to see my profession and the value of my degree undermined,” said Misty Hawkins, regional director of the four-county Arkansas River Valley Regional Library System. “…With 23% of Arkansans reading at or below the lowest literacy level, I cannot understand why we would discourage education rather than promote it.”
Hawkins also said SB 181 has “no clear definition or explanation” for what work experience in libraries would qualify a potential director without the requisite degree.
The other two library directors who opposed the bill were Judy Calhoun, who recently retired from the five-county Southeast Arkansas Regional Library System, and John McGraw, director of the Faulkner-Van Buren Regional Library.
All three said work experience is valuable, but education is an important supplement.
“It gives you valuable tools, it tells you a lot of the theory behind why we’re doing what we’re doing, [and] it gives you skills, like cataloguing, that I don’t think you’re going to get as easily just doing the job on the fly,” McGraw said.
He also said the bill contradicted the current “moral panic that librarians aren’t doing enough.”
None of Arkansas’ institutions of higher education have American Library Association-accredited master’s degree programs, said the bill’s Republican sponsors, Rep. Rebecca Burkes of Lowell and Sen. Dan Sullivan of Jonesboro. They also said SB 181 will make it easier for local library boards to fill library director vacancies.
The three library directors all asserted that these degree programs are offered online and that there is no shortage of degreed librarians in Arkansas.
The Arkansas State Library Board provides scholarships for students in an ALA-accredited master’s degree program, and the board rejected a motion earlier this month to remove the ALA from its scholarship requirements.
The failed motion also would have removed the ALA from the State Library’s standards for state aid to public libraries, which are partly based on one of the statutes SB 181 seeks to amend.
Sullivan is also sponsoring Senate Bill 184, which would dissolve the State Library Board. Hawkins spoke against the bill before a Senate committee earlier this month. The bill passed the Senate and has yet to be heard by a House committee.
On Wednesday, Sullivan reiterated his opposition to both ALA and the State Library Board. He has often criticized the statement within the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights that access to libraries should not be restricted based on a person’s age. Far-right conservatives nationwide have claimed this is proof that the ALA believes in forcing content about sexual activity and LGBTQ+ topics onto children.
Former ALA President Emily Drabinski called herself a Marxist in a 2022 tweet; Sullivan repeated his assertion that this means ALA supports a political agenda and expects libraries to do the same. He also criticized ALA’s stated commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
“Our libraries are fantastic institutions,” Sullivan said. “For decades, our professionals that run those are good hardworking folks in your communities… We can have professionals in our libraries who have a choice to go to programs that allow them to pursue what they think is important, and your local board can choose whether that’s important.”
Rep. Aaron Pilkington, R-Knoxville, said he found SB 181 confusing. He represents part of the Arkansas River Valley Regional Library System and said he appreciated Hawkins’ testimony.
“It’d be different if I had people coming to me saying that we can’t fill these positions at the libraries in Pope, Johnson and Yell counties, but… I’m not hearing that, so it makes me think this isn’t a need,” Pilkington said. “And then I hear all this discussion about all these other [things], and granted, I don’t like Marxists either, I don’t like a lot of the things that the senator mentioned, but to me, I’m not seeing how we’re addressing those problems in this bill.”
Pilkington was in the minority of committee members, primarily Democrats, who voted against SB 181 on a voice vote.
The full House is expected to vote on the bill Thursday, and it would then go to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ desk.
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