Posted on 13 May 2026 by Ken Feser.
The Government of Alberta plans to make libraries regulate public access to any materials with explicit content. The Province has said restrictions will apply to borrowing and in-library access, and to all materials including adult collections. Materials impacted will include adult graphic novels, art books, educational books, and DVDs - items that are freely available at bookstores and on mainstream streaming services like Netflix.
Implementing government regulations proposed in Bill 28 will damage our services and facilities, and the Province has no plans to offer any money for us to implement the regulations.
Our first challenge will be to identify restricted materials. We have over a quarter million items in our collections, and thousands of items are added every year. There is no automated or easy way to review these materials. It will take significant staff time to do this. Some collections like DVDs are essentially impossible to review. There is no consistent external rating system available and we just can’t go through thousands of hours of video looking for explicit content.
Once materials are identified, they must be locked away from public access. We will have to build secure shelving or rooms; we have neither the space nor budget to do so. It will not be sufficient to place items “behind a counter” as the Province has suggested; we don’t have room and our counters are not always staffed. The retrieval process will take additional staff time. Some collections like DVDs are too large to be secured and may have to be eliminated.
Restricted items will disappear from view. Youth under 16 will have no access. Even adults will have to identify themselves and ask staff for materials. We know from experience that these types of barriers will drive usage of these materials to near zero. The invisibility of materials plus the inconvenience and stigma of asking for access will kill demand. Burying a book is nearly as effective as burning it.
Another option would be to close adult areas of the library to youth under 16. This would be much easier to implement, and it is how some American libraries have responded to similar regulations. We would not need to review our adult collections and adult access would not be blocked. DVDs could also remain in our collection. However, cutting off youth access to adult collections and spaces would be devastating.
No youth access would mean walls, turnstiles, or other barriers to keep youth out. This will once again cost money we don’t have budgeted, and will block the openness and river views that beautify our space. Emergency access and egress would have to be worked out. We will require staff or technology to control who gets into these previously open spaces. Adults will have to identify themselves and verify their age to enter.
Youth would be cut off from the majority of our collections, and left with limited options in the children’s and young adult collections. Youth who use our spaces for safe shelter would be confined to the Children’s Library, which contains little of interest to a 15-year-old; the result could be conflict between families and these youth, or the youth’s abandonment of the library for less positive environments. Our award-winning Honeycomb House would become inaccessible to the majority of youth who use it.
The effects of restrictions will extend to almost everything we do. Our holds shelf is open so we will have to secure it or eliminate holds. Interlibrary loan becomes problematic when we need to control content. Our patron age categories will need to be revamped to meet government cut offs. We will have to collect and verify personal information more thoroughly, particularly birth dates. Parental authorizations, including who gets to authorize, will have to be worked out and recorded. We will have to find a reliable source of youth identification, which doesn’t seem to exist in Alberta.
Generally speaking, none of our spaces or processes are set up for this kind of controlled access. We have been working in partnership with the Province for decades to reduce barriers and open up our facilities and collections to the public. Locking down spaces and content runs against the spirit of the public library, one of the most beloved and trusted public institutions in Alberta.
It is worth noting that these restrictions also undermine intellectual freedom, a value that is upheld by libraries in Alberta, Canada, and the world. A tiny percentage, well under 1%, of our materials contains images that could be considered explicit. These are always part of a larger work which has value as an educational resource or artistic expression; art books, scientific works, health guides, movies, TV series, graphic novels, and more can contain such images. These are legitimate materials that are wanted by people in our community.
Alberta libraries would be willing to work with the Province to address the concerns which are driving these regulations. Common sense, workable solutions are possible. Parents already have the ability to control children’s use of the library, but more fine-grained controls could be added. Parental advisories could be added to collections like adult graphic novels and DVDs. Improvements are always possible and we care about making our library welcoming to everyone in our community. Unfortunately, the Province has abandoned its longstanding cooperative approach to the public library network, has proceeded with no library input and is headed towards imposition of unworkable regulations.
Ken Feser
Chief Librarian
Follow the library on social media: @mhpubliclibrary