Are you a Texas public school librarian with questions about the new laws? You’re not alone. This past week at the Sun City Ed Tech Conference in El Paso, Texas, I shared a new custom GPT I put together for a colleague’s workshop. Since my contribution took place right before lunch, my colleague jokingly suggested that I would answer any questions during my lunch time. Some librarians took me up my colleague’s offer.

A Quick Note About Me

I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a librarian, although I did have the opportunity to support librarians as part of my job as Director of Instructional Technology and Library Services (ITLS), as I dubbed it, in San Antonio ISD for a little over nine years. What a wonderful opportunity that was to meet and support professional educators, teacher-librarians and media specialists, who worked in San Antonio schools, making do with small budgets, a few dollars per student, to put quality reading in the hands of low, socio-economically challenged children.

Texas Library Law Questions

Several laws have taken effect, leading to questions such as:

• “How do I ensure my classroom library collection meets the standards required by both HB 900 and SB 13?”
• “What specific criteria should I use to evaluate whether a book might be considered ‘sexually explicit’ under the READER Act?”
• “How do the TEA’s model collection development policies differ from previous standards?”
• “What documentation should I maintain to demonstrate compliance with state library laws?”
• “What’s the most efficient way to inventory and catalog all classroom libraries across our campus/district?”
• “How should we handle books that fall into gray areas under the new legislation?”
• “What timeline should we follow to ensure full compliance with SB 13’s classroom library requirements?”

It occurred to me, listening to librarians discuss this, to create a custom GPT, some bots to assist them in figuring out what to do.

Library Law Pro is a specialized assistant for Texas librarians navigating state legislation affecting school and classroom libraries. It provides accurate, clear guidance on HB 900 (READER Act), SB 13, and related laws, helping librarians understand compliance requirements and implementation strategies.

Library Law Bots/GPTs

Here are the bots where you can go ask questions and get responses:

• Library Law Pro: An enhanced version of the Library Law Bot, providing specialized assistance for Texas librarians on library-related legislation. This is hosted via BoodleBox AI. Get a free two months account using the MGFREE123 code, or this referral link for one month in case the code expires. BoodleBox safeguards your data privacy, and is my personal recommendation for educators who don’t want to use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot because it uses what they put into the system for training.
• Library Law Bot, a Custom GPT: This is a ChatGPT Custom GPT version of the Library Law Pro. You will need a free ChatGPT account to use it.

I’ve seen a lot of questions pop up in forums, on Reddit, and other places from librarians. Use the law bot to get you going in the right direction, but always involve district stakeholders.