The St. Louis Public Library regards online social media in the same way as its other information resources in accordance with its mission of providing learning resources and information services that support and improve individual, family, and community life.
While the St. Louis Public Library encourages an open forum, posts and comments on St. Louis Public Library's social media are moderated by Library staff. The Library reserves the right, within its sole discretion, to not post or to remove submissions/comments that are unlawful or violate this policy. This policy is not intended to restrict communications or actions protected or required by state or federal law.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
• Posting offensive, obscene, threatening, or abusive content on library social media is strictly prohibited. The Library will remove comments that contain abusive, vulgar, offensive, threatening or harassing language, personal attacks of any kind, or offensive terms that target specific individuals or groups.
• Hate speech will not be tolerated. Posts containing racism, homophobia, sexism, or any other form of hate speech will be removed from the Library's social media.
• Comments and posts should be related to the issue or topic discussed.
• Think before you post. You are legally liable for everything you post. Remember that the internet never forgets. Everything you post may be visible to the world even after you attempt to delete it.
• The content of the Library’s social media is subject to public records laws, including the Missouri Sunshine laws. Relevant record retention schedules apply to social media content. Content must be managed, stored, and retrieved to comply with open records laws and e-discovery laws and policies.
• Spam and commercial content will be removed. The Library will remove posts or comments used for political and commercial purposes or for soliciting funds. Gratuitous links to sites are viewed as spam and will result in the comment being removed.
• The Library is not responsible for any patron-generated comments/content that appear on the St. Louis Public Library's social media accounts. A posted comment is the opinion of the poster only, and publication of a comment does not imply endorsement of or agreement by the St. Louis Public Library.
• Users may report questions or concerns. Moderators will review those questions or concerns as soon as possible. In some instances, we will not have the resources to review user comments and posts, but we do reserve the right to edit or delete user comments and posts in a manner consistent with our mission and policies.
• The Library will not remove all posts that have been reported and the Library cannot respond individually to every report.
Adopted by the Board of Directors, April 2017
