Not only are you mistaken with your simplistic view of “majority rules”, as Jodi has so graciously demonstrated, but you even got your example wrong. A majority of voters did NOT vote for Dubya – in fact, another candidate received more votes than Bush. So, in this case, the minority ruled as per the law of the land.
As a librarian, I will go to work more invigorated tomorrow knowing that I am guarding one of the last strongholds of intellectual freedom.
Since it will be Monday, this will require an awful lot of coffee.
Correcting an earlier point, a librarian can view what a person has checked out. If the librarian or the clerks working the checkout desk couldn’t it would be pretty hard to do things like send out overdue notices and bills. However, I believe every state requires that library’s keep their circulation records confidential unless they are given a court order.
In my 12 years of working as a librarian, I’ve only seen the police exercise that right twice and once was to bust a library employee who was systematically stealing videos and then re-selling them out of his own home.
However, the police can’t come in, flash their badges and say “Tell me what Lee Harvey Oswald has checked out.” However, a valid court order will bring up the info.
Normally, libraries don’t keep records of what people have checked out and returned because it’s not a wise use of resources to save all that data. There will be records of how often particular items were checked out, but not by whom.
It would really help this discussion if you could produce some examples in which the expurgation of a library by the majority was legally performed. Not secretly, but legally.
With all due respect, I must thank the wisdom of the framers who installed safeguards in the Constitution that protect me and others like me from the outright majoritarianism that you are so comfortable with. I am also glad I do not live in Duck Duck Goose’s kind of community, and I am sure the feeling is mutual.
I am still waiting for DDG’s analysis regarding how the will of the majority can abridge the rights of the minority. I am not satisfied by “it’s a majority rule country”, or “when the majority says so, fiat.”
The rest of the argument is just gravy.
MR
BobT:
I guess my last post on confidentiality was a little fuzzy.
Although librarians and clerks can access open records in my system, we’re locked out of closed transactions. I can spot Jane Smith’s overdues just fine. But when she asks me to check my system and order the same set of videos she got last semester because she lost her records, we’re both SOL. The records must exist, since that’s the way computers work, and the head librarian probably knows the password to open them, in case of court order.
But, as I understand it, no one, including the police and the Feds is allowed to go fishing in the records, just because they don’t like a user’s politics or nationality.
“Today, only 21 years later, a nationwide body of law on library confidentiality has developed. Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia provide some type of privacy protection to library patrons. Only Ohio does not.”
"Most existing statutes provide for certain exceptions to the rule of patron confidentiality. Confidential information may be disclosed with the consent of the patron in question, for example, to compile statistical data on library use or to collect fines and penalties.
In addition, most statutes allow the disclosure of confidential information in response to a valid court order. Some also allow disclosure in response to a subpoena. Unfortunately, the majority of the laws say little or nothing beyond that. "
American Libraries, June-July 1999 v30 i6 p86(2)
Patron confidentiality, millenium style
So records are probably confidential unless you do something to get the law on you, or you live in Ohio. Then all bets are off.
I once asked the computer guru of my library system once about old circulation records and she said that in theory, they could be kept, but it would require a lot of storage space to maintain them.
A large city will circulate millions of items per year and that’s a lot of data. They’re just isn’t any reason for the library to want to know if Person A checked out Book X. It’s not like the library is Amazon.com (although some people think libraries should operate like book stores, but that’s a whole different thread) and we need to know each customer’s usage patterns.
The library does want to know which books circulate a lot, so extra copies can be bought and which areas need to be beefed up. Your average public library will check out most of its books in the fiction section, followed usually by books on health (usually diet or exercise).
I do know that once I return a book to the library where I work and the clerk discharges it, the record of my having that book is lost.
I think what the people arguing about the first amendment are missing is that, as a pracitcal matter, libraries wouldn’t exist if the taxpayers didn’t find them useful. Yes, libraries can stock material that people don’t like. But the taxpayers have no obligation to continue funding projects that they don’t like. So, if the librarians start stocking up on porn videos, they’ll find their budgets cut and the library closed. If a librarian isn’t doing their job, then they will be replaced by a librarian acceptable to the taxpayers.
Yes, it is difficult to remove any one particular book. But every couple of years the library needs to issue a bond for new construction, or there’s a vote on library funding. If the library is not perceived to be serving the community, then what do you think will happen?
The library exists to serve the community, right? As a practical matter the community means the taxpayers. If the library no longer serves the taxpayers, the taxpayers will no longer serve the library and the library will cease to exist.
And because of the reasons cited above, you won’t find a library stocked up with hardcore porn videos or prominently displayed subscriptions to “Hustler.”
LEMUR says:
Actually, I don’t think we are missing this at all. No one has said that there is an automatic right to have a library. Is there an obvious tension between the right to have materials in the library that the community wants and finds useful, and the right to access information that some of the community might profoundly dislike? Yes. But acknowledging that the Firs Amendment to some extent protects the latter does not mean we are ignoring the former. DUCK DUCK GOOSE has said – repeatedly – that the majority’s wishes will prevail in terms of censoring collections. Again, this is flat wrong. The First Amendment means that when such questions are taken up by the appropriate party (the head of library acquisitions or the library board or whomever), the discussion canNOT be limited only to what the public wants.
This does not mean that the taxpayers will be allowed to dictate the specifics of a public, government-funded library to the detriment of the constitutional rights of individuals. This is not an either/or proposition, and should not be painted as such; the choice is not between the taxpayer having no say and the taxpayer having all the say. Instead, the taxpayer may vote for levies and improvements he or she believes in but once the money is appropriated, he or she will have very little to say in how the money is spent – and even less say in how it is spent in a library than in other contexts.
BOB T. says:
Actually, pornographic materials are exempted from the First Amendment discussion outlined above because they are generally deemed obscene. Obscene materials are not covered by the First Amendment. Therefore the one area of materials where the government CAN censor as freely as DUCK has argued and as freely as it wants is the area of pornography.
BOB T. says:
quote:
And because of the reasons cited above, you won’t find a library stocked up with hardcore porn videos or prominently displayed subscriptions to “Hustler.”
I second this. I may have joked at some point earlier that porn in the library is safe. But consider the “porn” we’ve been talking about. A magazine with a picture of Heather Graham, half dressed. Scandalous!
Are libraries going to have books with swear words, and sex and viloence? Probably. Playboy? Maybe, because everyone only reads that for the articles (Kaiju’s eyes roll). The Marquis de Sade? Sick stuff, but of historical interest.
But their only goinng to have these things if the people using the library want or need them. I work in an academic branch library with a book budget of $450. Do I have these things? Hahahahahaha. I don’t need them and I don’t have the money to make frivilous purchases. Public libaries have more money, but I don’t ever remember hearing a librarian complain about having money to burn. We generally can’t afford to buy everything we want, so we’re careful with the book budget.
But what scares me about this thread is the talk about how libraries who buy Porn should have their budgets cut by an angry public. Yes, that’s true. Librarians agree with that. That’s why we don’t buy porn. But should we get are budget cut for buying Talk Magazine, or Harry Potter, or any singly title that a few people in the community are outraged over? I hope not.
This story appeared today on CNN.com: Libraries to Take On Anti-Smut Internet Law.
Why? What’s he or she doing to you?
I agree. Information, literature and entertainment that are safe for children are fit only for children. (BTW: This last statement of yours is in conflict with your admission that you feel threatened by people who look at porn, implying that you don’t think it should be in libraries.)
There have been creepy, threatening people coming into public libraries long before the Internet was available in those facilities. I don’t know if anyone can make any correlation between Internet usage and criminal incidents in libraries.
The most likely crime you will encounter in a public library will be theft. So, don’t leave your stuff unguarded.
My point was not that libraries should be shut down if they stock Harry Potter. Only that a library MUST be sensitive to public opinion, because they are funded by the public. I agree that collection decisions should be made by the librarians…but the librarians have to serve the public or support for libraries will wither. And I LIKE libraries.
If a majority of people don’t like the direction a library is going the libary is in trouble. I think libraries generally do a good job, and this thing about Talk magazine is pathetic. This woman QUIT because she was offended by the magazine cover? Pathetic.
Oh, about Playboy? Nowadays the only people who read Playboy really do read it for the articles. I mean, this is the age of the internet after all.
quote:
In my library system, the internet is unfiltered. I’m the entire staff in a one room branch library and have no security. If someone wants to come in and surf porn all day, I’m going to feel personally, pysically threatened.
Jab1:
Why? What’s he or she doing to you?
Well, Jab, when I was in Madison, WI in the 80’s we had a guy go nuts and attack someone with a fire axe in the library, but I didn’t work there, so I probaly shouldn’t count that. But of the three libraries I’ve worked in, there were exhibitionists in two of them. And this was all pre-internet. I’m not claiming that porn watchers are drooling pervs, but my desk faces the computers and I don’t wanna have to share dirty pictures with a stranger. Makes me kind of uncomfortable. In another workplace, I can claim sexual harrassment. Why should a library be different?
And, as I said before, students sign an agreement at our school that they aren’t going to access porn on our computers. Guess they’ll have to do it at home. No skin off my nose.
quote from Lemur866:
but the librarians have to serve the public or support for libraries will wither. And I LIKE libraries.
And librarians like the public. Really. But do we agree that it is possible to serve the public without banning the book every time someone complains? This is the latest list I could find of the sort of things the public wants taken off the shelves.
Oops. Or I could give you a link that works.
Okay, but why not face the computers the other way? Also, the library could spring for one of those privacy screens I’ve seen. It fits on the front of the monitor. It’s polarized, so the only person who can see the screen is the user. (Or someone directly behind him.)
I should have mentioned this before: At LAPL, they do not allow anyone younger than 18 to use a computer unless accompanied by an adult. Now, if Dad allows Junior to look at HotBabes.com while he’s there, I don’t think there’s much the library could do about it. Besides protecting the kids from porn, it also protects the computers from the children!
Okay, but why not face the computers the other way? Also, the library could spring for one of those privacy screens I’ve seen. It fits on the front of the monitor. It’s polarized, so the only person who can see the screen is the user. (Or someone directly behind him.)
Physically impossible, in my case. My library is very small. About the size of my livingroom. We’d have to do rewiring, or pay for those polarized screens, and there’s no money for either.
And again, this issue comes down to collection development. I have an academic library. It’s for students to use for study. We do not filter the internet because we don’t know what part of it the students need to use. But sitting for an eight hour shift and accessing porn sites is not studying (at least not for any of our majors). I’m not going to bust people for occassional use, no matter what they’re looking at. I’m a librarian not the chief of the internet police. But the problems we have at other branches (in Madison, not the small town branch I work at) are with the extreme cases. These guys have already been thrown out of all the other libraries in town for chronic porn surfing. And they’re going to be thrown out of our library, too.
I should have mentioned this before: At LAPL, they do not allow anyone younger than 18 to use a computer unless accompanied by an adult.
This makes sense to me. And, since they’re a public library, they have a different clientelle than we do. I also wouldn’t object to filtered computers in a children’s library and unfiltered in the adult section. But often, these isses come down to budget.
Libraries don’t want to restrict information, but there is dangerous stuff out there, and the outcry that results from one child pornographer borrowing the library computer is a lot more justifiable then the kind where someeone wants us to censor Talk magazine.