SINGAPORE — After drawing flak — as well as support — for removing three children’s book titles from its collection due to feedback that they were not “pro-family”, the National Library Board (NLB) has decided to place two of the titles in the adults’ section, as suggested by some as the controversy unfolded over the past week.

It is also evaluating its processes for reviewing feedback on titles so it involves more voices, and will hold off acting on requests to review titles until the evaluation is completed.

The decision to place the books — which would have been pulped — in the adults’ section comes after earlier statements by the NLB defending the move. In a Facebook post yesterday, Communications and Information Minister Yaacob Ibrahim said that while he stands by the NLB’s decision to remove the titles from its children’s section, he understood the reactions of those who objected to the books being pulped after being withdrawn.

One of the three titles pulled by NLB — Who’s in My Family — was withdrawn in May and has already been disposed of. The two titles to get a reprieve are And Tango Makes Three and The White Swan Express.

“But I have instructed the NLB not to pulp the other two titles, but instead to place them in the adults’ section of the public libraries. I have also asked the NLB to review the process by which they deal with such books,” he said.

Elaborating on the announcement at a media conference yesterday, Mrs Elaine Ng, NLB’s chief executive officer, said: “One of the things we could improve is that we could seek more voices and find ways for external processes to feed into our decisions.”

Asked why it took the NLB so long to arrive at its decision, Mrs Ng said “the past week … has given us a lot of opportunities to learn and hear other voices”.

“I think what is important now is that, going forward, we found a means and alternative to put the books in the adults’ section. Our decision has always been that the materials in the children’s section need to be age-appropriate and that hasn’t changed.” She also said it was not the NLB’s intention to denigrate books by pulping them, which she said was a technical term the book industry used to describe the recycling of printed materials.

Mrs Ng also shed further light on the NLB’s current process for reviewing titles. Due to the large number of books purchased each year — about one million materials — librarians usually only refer to synopses before purchasing books, to ensure that books are placed on the shelves “in a timely fashion”.

However, regular internal reviews are carried out throughout the year, where librarians read the books and refer to published reviews before making recommendations for “collective deliberation”. These reviews are done both “to support reading programmes and in response to feedback from library users.”

She also said the NLB does not make decisions to withdraw titles based on the number of complaints received, but on the content of the books.

As for the Media Development Authority’s decision to take an Archie comic off bookstores’ shelves because it was found to breach content guidelines in its depiction of same-sex marriage, Mrs Ng said the MDA’s guidelines “apply only to booksellers, and the NLB is not a bookseller”. The NLB has four copies of the said comic in its catalogue.

Meanwhile, the NLB will “keep its hand outstretched to those who would work with us”, including the writers who have pulled out of NLB-related and NLB events over the past week in protest. “We will take the time to reach out to those who have partnered us and invest a lot of effort in engaging with them,” Mrs Ng said.