In the first two parts of this series, we described the dilemma facing librarians caught in the middle of America's raging battles over freedom, information, sexual imagery, children, morality, and the Internet. Dan, a librarian with tales of inappropriate images on screens in his library, was one of many who wrote for help in formulating responses and guidelines when library computers are used to access pornography.
Here are some of my ideas for addressing the problem.
1. To begin with, leaders have to begin discussions about the reality and ubiquity of "pornography." So do the rest of us. Pornography has existed alongside mainstream media for centuries, according to Lynn Hunt, writing in The Invention of Pornography. She notes that Etienne-Gabriel Peignot cataloged sexual literature in Paris in 1806, describing one work seized by the police as including "all that the most depraved, cruelest, and most abominable imagination can offer in the way of horror and infamy." Peignot might have burst a blood vessel over some of the Web's darker porno sites.
We sometimes indulge the fantasy that we can somehow make pornography go away, but the simple truth is that we can't and never will. As many of us want to see it as wish it would disappear, apparently. So we are trapped in a Kafkaesque political drama without end, stalemated in a strange space between condemnation and acquisition.
Information about sexuality is not in itself hazardous to adults or children. At some point, kids want and even need to approach sexuality. Is this always evil? Always dangerous? Is sexual imagery different from the commercial exploitation of sex, some of which is also violent, degrading, or disturbing? Should children, especially older ones, be automatically barred from seeing pictures of naked people?
Repeated exposure to prolonged and violent sexual imagery is believed to be harmful to children. But occasional exposure to nudity or sexuality - kids thumbing through Playboy via the library computer - isn't necessarily harmful, especially in conjunction with fuller information provided about sex by parents, teachers, counselors, or members of the clergy.
2. If you don't believe in censorship, then you shouldn't be invoking blocking software. It is noxious, unnecessary, and unworkable.
Blocking software isn't a "filter," it's censorship technology. It isn't a compromise between censorship and unlimited access to dangerous information, it is the embodiment of what censorship is. Some politicians want to use it to ban information about abortion and AIDS. Governments in Iraq and Iran want to use it to block email from the outside world.
Blocking software is indiscriminate. Information about the poet Anne Sexton, for example, can and is routinely blocked by such software because of the first three letters of her last name. It's easily exploited by extremists on any given political issue, from religion to gun control. Once it's in your library's computer system, the same clueless politicians screaming about pornography will be presenting you with ever longer lists of things they or their constituents don't want kids to see. These should be individual choices, to be made by parents and individual families, not governments and ideological fanatics.
Blocking software doesn't teach morality. It actually prevents children from learning how to make sensible and moral choices.
And ultimately, it can't work. One of the immutable laws of technology is that anything technology creates technology can undo. It can easily be circumvented.
It is the antithesis of what libraries have always stood for and fought for, and of the core political ideal of the Internet - that information wants to be free. And there is virtually no evidence of real risks to children that would warrant such a drastic step as the building of sophisticated censorship technology.
In addition, this technology is demeaning and offensive. Kids hate it. Ask them yourselves. Those young enough to need it should be supervised by human beings. Older kids should not be censored in this way.
3. Libraries have an opportunity to become teaching centers of information technology, in much the same way the American Red Cross has taken responsibility for teaching water safety. What better means of becoming invaluable than by instructing the young in how to use information technologies safely and rationally for education?
In Santa Clara County, California, for example, librarians have addressed the so-called pornography problem by holding a series of workshops to help families learn to navigate the Internet effectively and safely.
Libraries could instruct children in what to do when confronted with unexpected or unwelcome imagery. They could teach the difference between commercial Web sites, like those sponsored by liquor and tobacco companies, and genuine entertainment sites.
They could teach the young to use new-media technology in healthy ways - to ascertain, for instance, how much TV is too much. They could help monitor the children's cultural lives at a time when parents are technologically challenged and busier than ever. With additional funding, they could even help beleaguered parents by offering after-school care and education. What better place to leave small children in the hours between school and dinner than a place where they can access both technology and literature?
Libraries could also help ensure that children learn how to use books and literature at the same time, helping to preserve traditional culture while also making certain that the young - rich and poor - prepare themselves for the techno-driven future.
Librarians need to be savvy about politics and media, unfortunately. The days when they could sit and ssssh kids from behind their desks is long gone; they need to be proactive, to seize the public-relations initiative and send clear messages to politicians and parents that they are on top of this problem, leading rather than reacting, teaching rather than censoring and banning.
They should contact journalists and let them know what they're doing, so when Johnny downloads Hustler online, and the manipulable media jumps on the story, there is someone to call who can speak about how hard the library's working to make information safe and available.
Volunteer corps of parents and citizens could work effectively in libraries, helping small kids to get on the Net, steering them toward educational or entertainment resources, being there to notice if a Bud frog or an erect penis pops up on the screen instead of Big Bird.
Librarians know better than anyone that the dominant moral issue involving the young and technology isn't that some kids are online too much but that many aren't online at all - a reality that will become a bitter political issue as the educational and economic consequences for the poor become clearer. Libraries can seize this issue by becoming bridges between the wired and the disconnected, committing themselves to getting kids online just as passionately as they have taught so many how to read books over the years.
4. Libraries could help forge a new kind of social contract between technology and families. When families with kids join the library, they should be presented with information on the technological resources, opportunities, rules, and challenges of the digital age.
Kids who want access to the Net should be required to sign up for instructional courses. Parents should specify just how much Net access and instruction they want their kids to have - supervised or unsupervised, free or limited access. If they want supervised access, they should be asked to do some of the supervising, so they will learn something about the cultural and technological lives of their kids. Parents should sit down with librarians and be given a chance to ask questions about Net access.
5. Librarians can also work to address boomers' and others' phobias about technology bringing on the end of civilization as we know it because kids are watching and clicking instead of reading. Libraries are one of the few places in American society where computers and books exist alongside one another. Librarians can tie Net access to reading programs, make sure the young have access to traditional literature, and offer Mommy and Daddy a bonus: some assurance that culture as we know it will be taught and preserved.
Despite all the hysterical political rhetoric surrounding pornography, many parents may be willing to risk occasional exposure to Penthouse if their children are gaining access to critical new information technology. Some won't. Either way, it should be an individual, not a governmental, choice.
Librarians can explain the complicated issues involved. This might come in handy when your local William Bennett storms the Town Hall with news of the latest library cyber-penis-sighting.
