Dr. Laura is on topic

[CD McLean]

Hi,

I can see how some of you might think that the Dr. Laura discussion is off topic, but IMHO it isn't.  I am a research librarian for a data communications library and the other day my boss's boss wanted to have a conversation with me about Dr. Laura and about collection development and how parents should be choosing books rather than librarians.  From that one radio show (he said he wasn't a fan and rarely listened), he has become convinced that the library profession is a raving, slobbering bunch of liberals who don't know how to choose books for children.  I was
able to have a very interesting conversation with him about age appropriate books and how do you take the morals of one family and force/inflict/require them for all families?  While certainly some topics are questionable (again, IMHO), my point to him was it was the parents duty to determine what their children were reading and to take part in that selection as what one family approves of another may not.

Why this is on topic:  it is on topic because all of you librarians are going to be asked about this as I was.  It will come from friends or family or your boss or coworkers and you should explore how you feel about the issue.  But more importantly, given that we have online catalogues it is now easier to search for books that may be inappropriate based on keyword searches.  How is this nationwide discussion going to affect the online catalogs of our public school libraries and public libraries?  How are private school libraries going to change?  Do you want to give
every parent access to your school or public OPAC and allow them to forbid their child from checking certain books out?  How would we go about constructing such a system?  Are there proactive ways that we can deal with this very emotional issue that will give us as librarians respect from the general public?  Respect, because we are looking out for the rights of all.   I don't want to be marginalized and this debate has that potential for doing that to librarians.  We need to use technology to address these issues and force people to focus on the real issue:  some
families don't ever want their child to read about homosexuality.  They have that right.  Some families do want their child to learn that there are different lifestyles, also their prerogative.  How can we as technology librarians help?

Just my two cents.

cd
--
  CD McLean
  Research Librarian/Library Services Manager
  Paradyne Corp.

  cmclean at paradyne.com
  8545 126th Ave. N.
  Largo, FL  33773
  727-530-8206 (phone)  727-532-5949 (fax)

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Librarians like to be given trouble;
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