Posted on 09/10/2006 7:11:11 PM PDT by plan2succeed.org
If anything, this issue is a convenient dodge against the ALA's position on all materials, not just the internet.
And there IS some dissent.
Crossroads of a profession: Reflections of a yearlong discussion about electronic information (C&RL News, July/August 2003)
Show some responsibilityThe late John Swan once wrote that librarians are committed to access, but not to truth. We don't take responsibility for content or we'd like not to. Our profession as embodied by the ALA, is considering adopting a statement, prepared by the 21st Century Intellectual Freedom Statement Committee, "Libraries: An American Value," that says, "We support the rights of all individuals, including children and young adults, [emphasis added] to determine which resources are appropriate and necessary for themselves."1
As if that dodge from responsibility weren't enough, we follow with: "We respect the responsibility of all parents to guide their own children's use of the library and its resources and services." It's as if our profession were living in an idealized world where pornography and violent materials didn't exist and, moreover, where parents actually have the time, and then use that time to guide their children's use of libraries.
What is most disconcerting about these statements, and other ALA-adopted positions, is their proposed lack of librarian responsibility for what is appropriate for children. It's curious that we've always limited our collections, or filtered them if you will, through an active "non-selection" process. If we didn't buy an item, or accept it as a gift, the material didn't become part of the collection. We took responsibility for our patrons through collection development--though we defended our intellectual freedom principles saying we presented information on all sides of an issue. Now, if we follow our association's edicts, providing the Web and access to its information, we are acting contrary to our history and, I fear, in a manner untenable in our society.
Since we don't "collect" the Web, we don't have the opportunity to select only those materials in support of our population and institutions. Our collection development policies become moot in the face of universal access to Web information: if information is on the Web, we're expected to provide access to it in our libraries, regardless of appropriateness to our collection. Ordinarily, we wouldn't buy, or even accept as gifts, the advertising, the self-promoting, the vanity press, the sex and violence, and the games that constitute a healthy portion of the Web. (Unless, of course, our collection development policy supported the acquisition of such materials.)
As Carla Stoffle and Ann Symons wrote in a recent American Libraries article, the Web "makes the world available with no need to make selections, no traditional means for evaluating quality, veracity, or applicability. . . ."2 We are avoiding the information mediation duty historic to our profession, avoiding the difficult (and perhaps impossible) job of actually limiting access only to those materials on the Web that are in support of our institutions. Why should we be surprised when politicians (e.g., Sen. John McCain's [R-Arizona] filtering bill) attempt to legislate us into action?
[snip]
But for children, we should have a different standard. The American experience has long included protections for children, e.g., movie and TV ratings, zoning restrictions for adult-oriented businesses (including liquor stores), display prohibitions for skin magazines, etc. As the eminent child psychiatrist Robert Coles wrote in the New York Times last fall, "We as a society must continue to make distinctions between what is and is not appropriate for children, and we must keep putting up barriers in the way of the inappropriate on the Internet as well as on television and in the movies."3
A porn-in-libraries thread, if you want it!
Anyone who thinks porn should be available in libraries is watching waaay too much crap.
Either that, or smoking too much weed.
And I am getting off my computer now so I won't be able to engage in any debate with you. But that's all right, you wouldn't understand rational debate anyway.
The cartoon shows a class room. I am not aware of the scumbags from the ACLU campaigning for pornography in the class room. While I would not put it past them, I am not aware of them actually having done it.
Sorry, HKEx, your numbers are wrong and outdated. And is sounds like the smokescreen the ALA uses to cover its action in defiance of the US Supreme Court. SCOTUS says, unanimously, that it is "legitimate, even compelling" to keep minors from inappropriate material. The ALA, on the other hand, say that's "age" discrimination. Hmmm. Which to believe?
Who do you want raising your kids, parents or librarians? Public Librarians make no money to do their current job, we shouldn't expect them to take on the parental role as well. What may be age appropriate for one family, might not be age appropriate for another, and we shouldn't expect public librarians who make nothing to make the decisions.
Or do we just let the most sheltering hyper sensitive parent decide what is appropriate for the rest of us?
Who do you want to give up your parental authority to?
Fine, let's change the numbers. If web filtering is 99% effective and there are 20 million pornographic web sites out, then that means there are 200,000 pornographic web sites available to children.
Everyone claiming parents are responsible for their own children, tell me this. How does the ALA get away with telling parents they are responsible for their own children on one hand, while on the other hand the ALA misleads parents about the contents of books? How is an informed decision possible when the parents are misinformed by the supposed authority on books?
The ALA is warning parents that it is an IRRESPONSIBLE act to send a child into a library administrated by liberals.
Really? It is a volunteer position with no pay?
"Who do you want raising your kids, parents or librarians? Public Librarians make no money to do their current job, we shouldn't expect them to take on the parental role as well."
That is utterly wrongheaded.
We're not asking them to follow kids around and save them, just to refrain from harming them. That's not taking on the parental role; it's just refraining from taking on the role of the debaucher.
"What may be age appropriate for one family, might not be age appropriate for another, and we shouldn't expect public librarians who make nothing to make the decisions."
I'm not asking them to make a decision; I'm deciding and telling them what they are to do.
"Who do you want to give up your parental authority to?"
You want to talk about parental authority? How about going up to the refugees from the sixties that work at the library and telling them, "If my sons or daughters are exposed to porn on your watch, I'm going to take you out behind the library and stomp the crap out of you?"
They'd lose the excuses and do it, if they wanted to.
so if your kid goes into a public library, goes to the internet workstation, types in www.playboy.com. It's the librarians' fault. Got it.
"so if your kid goes into a public library, goes to the internet workstation, types in www.playboy.com. It's the librarians' fault."
Yup, just like it would be your fault if some kid wandered into your unfenced yard, jumped into your unfenced pool, and drowned.
"Got it."
Maybe some day.
I cannot figure out why knee-jerk libertarians think they have the right to walk into an environment and cr@p on the floor, and if everyone else doesn't like it, they should leave. There's also the premise of respecting other people's sensibilities. If somebody wants to look at porn, they should get their own d@mned computer and internet connection.
Once someone gets their official "Save the kids from library porn" card they are free to browse porn in the library without fear. When they get caught they can show their card and say they are doing protective research.
I really admire the logic in your post here. Thank you.
Good answer
"I cannot figure out why knee-jerk libertarians think they have the right to walk into an environment and cr@p on the floor, and if everyone else doesn't like it, they should leave."
Something they have in common with liberals.
Interesting that you assume children are invariably "sexually aroused" by means of pornography.
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