Censorship absolutism: A contrarian position

[Jennifer Heise]

I'm deeply concerned by the 'slippery slope' librarians embark down when they
begin to use censoring software in response to public outcry.
Because most current censoring software is only appropriate for use in a
fundamentalist church (censoring everything from nudity to NOW), it is
inappropriate as the mainstay of library collections. It is fundamentally
foriegn to our ideal of a balanced collection. It is as if we purchased a set
of Bible Baptist tracts and used them to replace our Religion, Philosophy, and
Hygeine sections!

If we use such obviously unbalanced software because the public is TELLING us
what we can and can't collect, because the public is dictating to us what we
can provide access to, how long is it before we must have written permission
from a parent to let a seventeen-year-old read a book of stories about gay
teenagers, or a book on birth control? (Or, for that matter, to let that
seventeen year old read a book on fundamentalist Chrisianity?) Once we let
these lazy parents tell us that WE are responsible for what their children
read, we open ourselves up for even MORE harassment than we already get from
moral absolutists.

I find this even more disturbing because the objectors involved are the kind
of lazy parents who the old-time librarians would have publicly shamed: "Mrs.
Johnson, just LOOK at what your Johnny has been READING!" Maybe fining
parents whose children try to publicly display pornography (using the web) in
the library might make our point.  If you can't teach your children to
behave better than that, you will have to pay for the service of having
them controlled.

Jennifer Heise,                             Net: jahb at lehigh.edu    \
Senior Specialist, Web Management, LUIR     Phone:(610)758-3072   / /
Lehigh University, 8A E. Packer Avenue, Bethlehem PA 18015        \
My opinions are my own. No one else would HAVE them anyway.

"See? I TOLD you the cheese was fractal!" -- Talia