Censorship Grant Wanted

[Thomas W. Perrin]

We have decided to seek a grant in order to pay the costs of monitoring
all those persons who want unrestricted internet access and in order to
keep them from seeing any items deemed inappropriate by the
politico/religio powerbases in our community.  

We figure that one person should be able to monitor four terminals at a
time by pacing back and forth on a regular basis (one supervisor has
proposed that we install a punch clock at the end of each row.  This,
however, would add to the total cost of the grant we are seeking.)

We have 75,000 patrons and nine branches. Each branch is open at least
six days a week, and two are open a half day on Sundays. There are four
to six banks of 4 terminals in each branch. However, some branches have
single terminals in isolated parts of the building, and we propose
putting a full time censorship assistant behind each of these terminals.
We have also proposed that we hire a full time censorship person to
monitor the activities of the reference librarian. Fortunately, the
entire professional staff (i.e. those with MLS degrees or the
equivalent) have refused additional censorship duties.  Although their
reasons for doing so are thought suspect by some, this will enable us to
hire additional staff at much lower cost for salaries and benefits. This
may, in part, be offset by the necessity of hiring a a Chief of
Censorship Services at a professional salary level. This person would
perform supervisory services and be the principal link to the
politico/religio community.

We have, to date, been largely unsuccessful in luring the young adult
patron into the library.  Some of our critics had thought that
unrestricted access to the internet would solve that problem, but the
debate on internet access has caused us to rethink our position. We now
believe that by eliminating YA acquisitions entirely and by supporting
censorship, we should be able to dispense with this population
altogether and concentrate our resources on the pre-teens and adult
populations.

We also believe that we can kill two political birds with one stone. By
hiring a large number of censorship assistants, we can help reduce our
local unemployment problem and keep the politico/religio faction off our
backs at least until the grant funds run out.

In order to pacify the constitutionalists, we propose to offer them free
coupons to local cyber cafes. 

My questions to the list are these: What should the qualifications be of
our censorship assistants? What training should they receive, and who
should they get it from? How much should they be paid, and should they
receive the same benefits as other library persons? Should the
censorship assistants wear a uniform or be otherwise distinguished from
the rest of the library staff.

Oh, one more thing.  To whom should we apply for a grant of this type,
and do you think there would be much competition for it?  Would our
prospects for receiving such a grant be enhanced by encorporating some
kind of behavioral modification, such as electric shock, for those
attempting to view inappropriate materials?

We're kinda new at this stuff, so any help you could provide would be
greatly appreciated.


Thomas W. Perrin