Thursday, November 8th, 2007
Go check out Smart Bitches, Trashy Books today for their titillating entry on people who think the library should tackle teens for looking at erotica.
And my two cents on this one is–I collect romance for the library here, and lemme tell ya, I do not just grab the Noras. There’s some spicy stuff in there too. Frankly, as a librarian, I don’t believe in censorship and I think people are smart enough to decide what they want to read without me telling them they aren’t allowed. Parents should decide how to deal with what their kids read, not librarians.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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I agree. No censorship. Society needs to stop eliminating stuff like this from parental responsibility. Determining what kids are reading should not be falling to libraries, but to the parents. That’s MY story and I’m sticking to it!
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Yeah! I have to say this is a debate that came up often when I was getting my Master’s degree in library science. It’s something that public librarians like the one SBTB deal with far more often than I do in the university, but I’m still very firm about not thinking librarians should make what are essentially parental decisions.
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You know-there is so much taken away from us when stuff like this happens.
What happened to parental responsibility? People like the mother are the ones that give away our parental freedom and make our children one step closer to being wards of the state.
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I don’t have children, so I have no idea what a parent would do in this situation, but I can say that as a librarian, I’m entirely uncomfortable telling anyone they’re not allowed to expand their knowledge by reading. NY handles it well in that a parent has to give their child the right to check out anything outside the children’s section. Okay, that I can handle. But making that decision all on my own? How do I know what a parent finds appropriate? I’m not a parent, and every parent raises their child differently. It’s a slippery slope that I don’t want to slide down.
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I agree about less censorship. I am a former English teacher. Personally, I’m just pleased to see teens READ at all.
I’m not about to tell them they can’t read X book.