LibraryTechtonics

Patron Calls Cops on Web Surfer at Palm Beach Library
[c/o Library Journal 29 jul '04]

Part of why I can’t work in a public library is because I don’t know how I would handle this situation, but it certainly be the way a library board of trustees would want me to. The person who reported the guy looking at little boys in their underwear had genuine concerns, but this is a situation where librarians are unfairly stuck in the middle with no good answer.

See, for me, as a librarian, to be adamant about free access for everyone, including young adults, and then say someone can’t look at whatever they want on the web is hypocritical. It’s a tough call for a librarian, and while saying “It’s unfiltered access and me stopping that patron is infringing on his rights” on one hand is a suboptimal response in such an extreme situation, watching from a distance and saying “There’s nothing wrong” feels dirty.

Librarians are continually stuck in this catch-22 situation where action on one hand sets a bad precedent and infringes on individual rights, or on the other hand makes the librarian look like the bad, passive, not-my-problem person. We are trained and degreed facilitators of information, and we are charged, on a level, to be impartial. We can’t just wander up to someone at a computer while we’re on shift and say “That’s dirty, stop it”, about little naked boys, or an anime web site, or Planned Parenthood information sites, or whatever we don’t care for people to be looking at, as if we should be looking at all.

It goes back to the moral fiber issue, where we can help people determine the authoritativeness of information, or teach them how to find information, but we are not here to judge what they do with it. That’s not what I got into this profession for, really, and I don’t think it’s our job to stitch the moral fiber of the community together when it’s broken. We are simply here to give them the tools to do it.

Librarians are not babysitters, not for kids, not for grownups. But no matter where the librarians went on this, it was going to be a bad call. I’d like to know more about the librarians’ side of this, to know just what they saw and how much. The article makes it sound like a very defensive sort of “we don’t see anything” reaction, which I hope isn’t the case. I’d rather a librarian own up to what the patron is looking at and still say it’s a private transaction than lie and say they don’t see the kiddie porn. That just makes us all look and sound like passive-aggressive liars.

The patron did the right thing, I think. The patron looked out for the kids, in lieu, unfortunately, of the children’s parents. I also think this would make an *excellent* case study for a library management or reference class.

Tags: librarianship