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
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?
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?