Last night, I went to the Performing Arts center in Tampa and saw Avenue Q. It was a hilarious play with some risque content. One of the acts is titled: "The Internet is for Porn." It was a scene between a kindergarten teacher talking about a lesson on the Internet and her pervert neighbor. She was extolling all the traditional benefits about the Internet and he kept interjecting "porn." Although, there may be many kindergarten teachers utilizing our library computers for lesson planning, a growing number of patrons seem to be utilizing them to access pornography. Recently, the Dallas Morning News found library patrons accessing pornography on library computers. "During a 45 minute period...users accessed more than 5,200 web pages containing identifiably pornographic material." (Levinthal, 2008) Unfortunately, I don't think Dallas is alone.
In December, 2000 Congress passed the Children's Internet Protect Act (CIPA). This law was intended to help protect children from accessing questionable or offensive material on school and library computers. This only applies while the child is accessing the computer. Adults are able to disable the filtering software and view sites that are off-limits to children. But, as most of you are aware, library computers are not tucked away in private areas and for the most part, the screens are viewable by other patrons. The Hillsborough County Public Library (2004) has the following policy: "2.2 Any library computer may not be used for any illegal activity including but not limited to...Displaying, printing, sending or storing any material that is obscene..." Is online pornography considered illegal or just immoral? What is a librarian to do? What would you do if one of your patrons was viewing pornography?
Hillsborough County Public Library. (2004, November). At your library...Internet access policy
[Brochure]. Retrieved on April 5, 2008, from
http://www.thpl.org/hcplc/ig/userguides/ayl/internetaccess.pdf.
Leventhal, D. (2008, January 15). On Dallas library computers, porn is a regular site. Dallas Morning News. Retrieved on April 5, 2008, from
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-libraryporn_15met.ART.State.Edition2.378295d.html
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2 comments:
Great title. I was mildly shocked to find this type of behavior going on at my own public library. We have our computers in different sections of our library. I have had a couple of incidents in the Computer Commons, a enclosed space which may only be used by patrons 18 years and older.
1) I was helping a patron and looked over to see obvious pornography. I told the patron he could not be viewing that here. He stated that it "accidentally" popped up and immediately removed it.
2) An older lady got me at the reference desk, and asked me to call the police. According to her, there were two young men viewing porn in the Commons. When I investigated the guys were looking at Bikini models (and there was another person nearby that verified this was the case).
I only tell these instances to illustrate that pornography is sometimes in the eye of the beholder; or, not all people know pornography when they see it.
I know this to be to true, but no matter what, I will always find it bizarre that people would willingly look at porn in inches of someone else. Besides using filters what else could we do? Assign someone to stand and watch the computers? Some material is better viewed at home.
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