Boston Library

[Grace Agnew]

As the former manager for systems at a large urban public library, I have to
state that the issues are not as simple and obvious as they may seem at
first glance.  The first amendment issue is looming large in this
discussion, but other legal and ethical issues come into play.

I have personally seen, as well as heard, of patrons using pornographic web
sites to sexually harrass staff and patrons.  Male patrons have requested
"help" from female staff to navigate pornographic web sites, or invited
female patrons at nearby workstations to take a look.  We have ethical
issues to face here, as well as EEOC issues if we knowingly permit or even
facilitate, the sexual harrassment of employees.

I am also aware of patrons using chat lines and listservs (often seemingly
innocuous chat lines, to do with Star Wars,  MUDs, MOOS, etc) to attempt to
meet children for sexual purposes.   Are there not legal liabilities, as
well as moral issues, if we actually know our Internet workstations are put
to these uses and yet take no action? 

Where does the library's responsiblity--legally *and* ethically (which are
not synonymous concepts)-- rest, when a library computer is used to stalk or
harrass a patron?  Is this a first amendment issue, or is it the same issue
libraries have already wrestled with--safeguarding the stacks and responding
immediately to patrons phyiscally harrassing or stalking patrons or staff?
New legal issues beyond First Amendment-- sexual harrassment, stalking and
protection of civil liberties, to name a few--come into play.  

I don't have clearcut answers, because this is not a simple issue.  The
world is changing and perhaps the old paradigms of books that meet a
collection development standard and stacks that are well-lit and patrolled
by security don't apply.  But the answer is more complex than simply citing
the First Amendment and writing the Mayor of Boston off as a right wing twit.

Grace

  

<*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*>

Grace Agnew
Assistant Director for Systems
Georgia Institute of Technology Library
(404) 894-8932 
(404) 894-6084 (fax)
grace.agnew at library.gatech.edu