FAILURE OF CENSORSHIP, THE

Library Administrator's Digest, Sep 2004 by Robinson, Charles W

I'm interested in the number of public libraries which have chosen to refuse federal funds rather than filter their Internet stations, at least for adults. Sure, most of these libraries, at least as far as I know, are those which stand to get very little money from the federal censorship bribes, and, truth to tell, it often isn't because a library opposes the federal bribe, it's because of the incredible bureaucracy involved in getting the money.

Large libraries, unfortunately, can't really afford to turn down the money and so are filtering away and undergoing the arduous task of filling out the forms. (I often wonder who reads the forms at the federal level: that must be a mind-numbing task in itself. Maybe nobody?)

Without filtering, the percentage of people who look at the kinds of sites that the filtering honchos cut out must be in the hundredths of one percent. Every library director I've talked to has always reported the number of people looking at that kind of site in a library as insignificant. Let's face it, practically no one looks at "porno" sites in a public area such as a library reading room.

I once read somewhere that as soon as a new form of communication is invented it is used for pornography - printing was adopted for the purpose very quickly after Gutenberg invented it in the 16th century. So it's no surprise that the Internet followed the same course. And throughout the history of public libraries, they really haven't been a very good source for the stuff, even after the censors loosened up a bit in the 50s. Before that, as we all know, books like Peyton Place (as I remember) were "banned in Boston" and in many public libraries. Hey, I remember when the book wholesaler Campbell and Hall, based in Boston, wouldn't carry the title! You could get it from Baker and Taylor of New Jersey, though.

Politics being politics, however, a stupid and ineffective federal attempt to "protect" children gets the approval of Congress and the Supreme Court. It's my personal opinion, probably shared by few, that kids below the age of puberty aren't interested in what the filters cut out, and children above the age of puberty can and do access all they want on some computer or another. Just as they did with reading material in the days of rampant book censorship.

Pornography has always, always, been limited in public display by the strictures of current good taste. And libraries are nothing if they aren't bastions of currently acceptable good taste. And they will continue to be, even if they refuse federal money for filtering. My guess is that the telephone companies will get the law requiring them to collect the money that the feds use to bribe libraries changed some day, and the program will die.

Unless, of course, the censors, of which we always will have an inexhaustible supply, run rampant in the halls of Congress and overturn the First Amendment, an anathema to them. Hey, that's always a possibility! Look at Prohibition!