Institutional Documentation

Dispute Resolution

Most issues at America's School Trust Library are resolved through the standard Submit-Correction or Submit-Feedback channels, and most never need to go any further. A small number do. Sometimes a contributor believes a librarian's decision was wrong. Sometimes a contributor disputes how their work was credited or characterized. Sometimes a rights claim was declined and the rights-holder wants to appeal. Sometimes a substantive editorial direction is contested. This page is the escalation path for those cases. It is a working procedure at a working library; treat it as such.

Step 1 — Start with the standard channel

Before anything else, use the standard channel that matches the issue.

• For a factual dispute — a date, a name, a citation, a misread document — use Submit-Correction on the page in question.
• For a rights claim — you hold the rights to something we have included and you want it removed or relicensed — use the takedown procedure at /about/rights/.
• For a contributor-credit issue — your work is uncredited, miscredited, or mischaracterized — use Submit-Feedback.

A librarian will respond within the standard service window of one to two weeks. Most issues end here, and they end here because the standard channels are designed to handle them quickly and on the record. If the response resolves the issue for you, you are done.

Step 2 — Escalation to the Head Librarian

If the standard-channel response does not resolve the issue, you can escalate. To escalate, reply to the librarian's response with the sentence: "I would like to escalate this." That phrase is all you need. You do not have to argue your case again at this stage; the prior correspondence will travel with the escalation.

The Head Librarian (currently Dave Sullivan) personally reviews escalated issues within two weeks. The review can do any of the following:

• Uphold the librarian's decision, with a written explanation of why.
• Reverse the decision and instruct the librarian to make the change you requested.
• Modify the decision — adopt part of what you asked for, decline part, and explain the line.
• Convene a review panel if the question is substantive enough to benefit from additional eyes.

The Head Librarian's response is in writing and is part of the file.

Step 3 — Review panel for substantive editorial disputes

Some disputes turn on substantive editorial judgment rather than on a clear factual error. How should a contested historical claim be characterized? Is a particular item in scope for the catalog? Does a contributor's framing cross the line from description into original argument that the catalog should not carry in its own voice? Those questions benefit from more than one reader.

For disputes of that kind, the Head Librarian convenes a three-person review panel:

• The Head Librarian.
• One Library staff member.
• One outside reviewer with relevant subject-matter expertise, drawn from the State Co-Librarian roster where appropriate.

The panel reviews the dispute, hears from the parties in writing (and by call if the parties prefer), and issues a written finding within four weeks. The finding is published on the Library with the same provenance and citation discipline as any other Library content. Panel findings are part of the record; they are not buried.

Step 4 — Library Board review (when the Board is seated)

When the Library Board is seated, the Board is the final internal arbiter for substantive editorial disputes, governance disputes, and disputes that touch the Library's institutional posture. Board review is requested in writing. The Board responds within sixty days. Board findings are public.

Until the Board is seated, Step 3 is the final internal step. The founding officers serve the Board's role in the interim. We name this openly: a working library at our current scale does not yet have a formal arbitration body, and we do not pretend otherwise. The Board is on the institutional roadmap; the absence of one today is a fact about our stage, not about our willingness to be reviewed.

Step 5 — External recourse

For disputes that internal review does not resolve, the parties may pursue external recourse appropriate to the matter.

• A rights-holder may pursue legal remedies. We will respond to lawful process as any institution does, and we will keep the prior internal record intact and available.
• A scholar may publish a critique of the Library's editorial choice in another venue. If the critique is published, the Library will note and link the critique on the disputed page. We would rather show the disagreement than hide it.
• An institutional partner may sever the partnership. Partnerships are voluntary on both sides; ending one is a normal outcome, not a crisis.

The Library's commitment is to handle internal review in good faith and on the timelines stated above. External recourse is a normal part of how a working public institution operates, and naming it here is part of the honest version of this page.

What we won't escalate

A short list of things we decline to put through the escalation procedure:

• Civility complaints about tone in a librarian's response, absent something substantive underneath them.
• Repetitive submissions of the same disputed claim after a written response has already addressed it.
• Attempts to use the dispute process to delay an editorial decision, harass a contributor, or exhaust staff time.

The Head Librarian has discretion to close repetitive or bad-faith escalations with a brief note in the file. That discretion is itself reviewable at Step 4 once the Board is seated.

What we log publicly

Escalations that reach Step 3 or higher are logged at /about/dispute-resolution-log/ (forthcoming) with the date, the substance of the dispute, and the resolution. Parties are named only with their consent; in declined-consent cases the entry is published with the substance and the resolution and without the names.

We log because the public character of dispute resolution is itself a public good. A library that hears disputes in private and resolves them in private cannot be trusted to hear the hard ones. The log is the proof that the procedure is real.

A note on the tone of this page

Disputes at a working library are normal. We would rather have them in the open than buried, and we would rather have them resolved on a clear procedure than left to drift. If you have an issue, please use the standard channel first; most issues end there, and the ones that do not are the reason this page exists.