Comments on: Be fingerprinted @ your library™

By: wadulisi/ melissa

wadulisi/ melissa — Fri, 27 May 2005 04:43:02 +0000

Aside: This week I came across the nonUS English version of Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men. Wonder if you know about the story surrounding that book, which was first to be published after 9/11. The publishers gave him a big stink, holding the printed books hostage. When a librarian found out about this censorship, she rallied together other library sciences folks and succeeded to get those books out to the public. I was quite inspired to hear about librarians challenging the powers-that-be (and, more recently, dumb ass legislation like the PATRIOT Act).

By: Mel B.

Mel B. — Tue, 24 May 2005 14:07:49 +0000

I think any move to fingerprint me or otherwise identify me in the notion of safety is one step closer to Big Brother.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 24 May 2005 06:50:07 +0000

Yeah, God forbid the government increase funding to libraries for books and materials, but fingerprinting–now that’s something our legislators can get behind!

By: Heather

Heather — Tue, 24 May 2005 04:48:51 +0000

James Dobson writing the software. Funny line. Yet probably true.

I mention the masturbation arrest thing, slightly sarcastically, because it really shines a light on how flimsy this whole line of reasoning is for the fingerprinting. And what I find really amusing is that, if this does go on a larger scale, that governments would throw all sorts of money into this kind of thing. We’re quick to fund policing, slow to fund anything that might enrich the mind.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 23 May 2005 13:11:21 +0000

I understood what you meant. Masturbating in the library is reason enough to be ejected and arrested. The issue of viewing porn is another matter because porn can be difficult to define. My public library has a copy of “The Joy of Sex” on the shelf where anyone can take a look at it. Some would consider this pornography. So as you say, looking at porn on a public computer, if it’s not illegal porn, is not actionable in and of itself. Thus ALA policy is not to filter Internet usage at all, a policy which public and school libraries violate all the time because they’d rather not deal with complaints. When we dealt with this issue in my Library Science classes (I think it was in the Reference class), the teacher took the ALA line and basically told us that in public and college libraries, librarians could not act as censors. The most advice she would give was that if someone is viewing porn, and another patron complains, then the Librarian can suggest the porn-viewer consider the effect on other patrons. There are other techniques for cutting down on porn-viewing in public, such as making sure there is no privacy whatsoever at the public computer terminals.

Lower school libraries are another matter. At the school where I worked for three years, there was no question about filtering. We had to filter, no ifs, ands, or buts, because the school board was not going to deal with parental complaints. The problem with filters is that they are too general, picking out quality sites as well as porn. I always felt like James Dobson must have written the filtering code for our software, because the filter would eliminate sites linked to “breast cancer” or “abortion” as well as genuine porn. At the same time, students could visit the NRA website and look at pictures of pin-up girls with shotguns. Maybe filters are more reliable today, however.