Browsing On A Sunday: Porn In Libraries, Librarians In Porn, Cultural Archives, And Affirmations Of Piracy

The issue of porn on public library computers is back in the news thanks to an incident at the Lake City Public Library in Washington State.  A mother with her two children observed a man watching hard core porn there and complained to the staff.  The library staff refused to intervene, citing a policy of unfettered Internet access to adults.  No censorship, they say.  I don’t know.  Librarians censor all the time, except we call it collection development. 

I wonder if the library would honor requests from patrons for videos distributed by Hustler or Vivid.  I’d guess that explicit adult video is under-represented in most collections.  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has the initial story, and coverage of an earlier Washington State Supreme Court decision that allows public libraries in that state to censor porn without liability.

The Consumerist has an informal poll on this very topic, with (as of this writing) close to 40% of respondents saying porn should not be openly viewable in a library.  About 27% would allow it in certain sections of the library.  Those in favor of library porn were split between viewing with no restrictions at around 7% and those who would allow unfettered access while requiring the viewer to have some consideration of the surroundings at 26%.

For those (few, I’m sure) interested in porn that features libraries and librarians, the Paris Review (co-founded by George Plimpton in the 1950s) has an article called Checking Out.  It features highlights of materials that feature library sex, including some of which involves staff.  Warning: some of the graphics on the page includes nudity as depicted on the reproduced covers of such titles as Naughty Voyeur Librarian and Nympho Librarian.  Ahhhhh, the nobility of freedom of speech.  For the record, WorldCat shows no libraries as having holdings for Nympho Librarian.  However, Google Books has about 50 references to the title, or items like it.  Some of these search hits are from references in Library Journal, of all places. 

Another topic that may be considered gritty but not seedy is related in this story in The Atlantic, The Legacy of Alan Lomax.  He founded Folkways Records and was obsessive about preserving American folk traditions by recording as much of it as possible.  His archive of recordings was pretty vast.  Now that archive is going digital for streaming to the public.  That’s some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs, and uncounted manuscripts.  It should all be available at some point via the Cultural Equity web site, assuming some copyright troll doesn’t try to claim rights.

Speaking of copyright trolls, Tom Brady, the quarterback for the New England Patriots who will be playing in today’s Super Bowl game against the New York Giants has stated that he watched last year’s game via an illegal stream while rehabbing his foot in Costa Rica.  I wonder if the NFL will sue him.  Did he have permission of the NFL and the teams involved?  Brady seems experienced enough to find a source for the game on his laptop.  Let’s not ask how he gets his movies and music. 

 And speaking of illegal music downloads, Neil Young has come out in favor of music piracy.  He is quoted on CNN as saying "Piracy is the new radio.  I look at the Internet as the new radio. I look at the radio as gone."  I’m sure his label and the radio conglomerates think otherwise.  Stop it Neil, you’ll make Lars Ulrich from Metallica cry.  [MG]