One Librarian's Story

[David Goodman]

	There's something worth pointing out here--

The librarian's user interview determined that the material wanted was,
specifically, "pictures of naked women."  In today's world, that would
generally not be considered particularly "hard-core pornography." The
patron was apparently unsophisticated enough to confuse the two (or
possibly was
teasing thne librarian). 

I think most of us as librarians, or as parents--and certainly most
14-year olds--would not consider it inappropriate for a 14 year old
teenager, m or f,
to look at pictures of naked humans, m or f. I assume the library
concerned has these in print as well as on the web.  

Whatever position we have about some of the material available on the
internet, or in print,** this rather serves an example of the danger of
filtering and restricting access, because it is an example either of a 
desire to restrict access to "hard-core pornography" that would result in
restricting access to generally acceptable material, or a deliberate
desire to restrict
access to sexual but non-pornographic material under the guise of
restricting pornography.   

** I do have a strong position on this qy., but it is not relevant to the
present example. 

re:

 _________________________________
> Subject: One Librarian's Story By Heidi Borton
> Author:  Filtering Facts <burt at northwest.com> at Internet
> Date:    7/12/98 11:43 PM
> 
> This is a true story by a librarian who resigned after 10 years at the
King
> County (Wash.) Library rather than carry out the library policy of
providing
> pornography to children:
> 
> One Librarian's Story By Heidi Borton
> http://www.filteringfacts.org/borton.htm


David Goodman, Princeton University Biology Library				
dgoodman at pucc.princeton.edu            609-258-3235