Gather articles and information from ALA site, and sites listed above, and make a packet of materials about book challenges for your Trustees. Consider a call to ALA OIF with Board President and/or additional Trustees to talk with ALA OIF together about Trustees’ role/responsibility in managing a challenge.
If you have a good working relationship with your village/town mayor, school district superintendent, and/or other local officials or community leaders who support your library, consider alerting them that you have received a book challenge. You will need advocates and supporters, and they may have some words of wisdom to share. They may also be willing to attend a Board meeting and address the Board in support of the Library. The advocates may also (quietly, discreetly) inform their network of colleagues and friends about what's happening at your library. This can be helpful in garnering support for an upcoming tax levy vote.
Policies to re-review: Materials Selection/Collection Development; Exhibit & Displays (both staff-curated and artist-curated); Programming
Just sharing some resources that are out there about censorship. I attended an excellent session called Empowered Against Book Bans by Kelly Jensen from Bookriot.com. She shared tons of info: https://tinyurl.com/METRO-BannedBooks
ALA has built a whole mini website on the issue. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/fight-censorship.
If you receive a formal challenge to a book or other item, start by calling the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom both to report it, and to ask for advice, talking points, help with drafting or editing a response. The staff there is responsive by both phone and email and are enormously supportive and helpful. https://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/oif
Unite Against Book Bans provides some useful talking points and language for front-line staff and for other purposes such as reaching out to your local legislator: https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/toolkit/#talking-points
https://truthout.org/articles/when-missouri-proposed-library-censorship-librarians-got-organized/ When Missouri Proposed Library Censorship, Librarians Got Organized [Truthout]
https://wilwheaton.net/2023/03/the-library-is-a-safe-place/ “The library is a safe place.” [WIL WHEATON dot NET]