Rosen: Library as porn peddler - Articles - CAIR - Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform

The current flap over Spanish-language dirty comic books on the shelves of the Denver Public Library raises a number of serious questions.

One such publication is titled La Policiaca Novela. It features graphic illustrations of well-endowed, bare-breasted women repeatedly engaged in sexual intercourse or on the receiving end of severe beatings from men.

Diane Lapierre, the library's director of strategic initiatives (more on what that title suggests later), prefers to call these comic books "illustrated novellas" and says they are very popular among Latino library users. She claims, "They are targeted at people who don't have strong reading skills and are trying to improve." I can think of many other ways to improve your reading skills.

More plausibly, the businesses that publish these raunchy comic books are targeting people who like graphic illustrations of sex and violence.... A public library has finite funds. It should spend them on more appropriate and elevating material.

...There are now more than 6,000 fotonovelas, and they've been on DPL shelves for 13 years. Someone is responsible for putting them there. The sleazy ones are regularly checked out, and library staffers have never noticed them? Please.

Regarding the job of "Director of Strategic Initiatives": Positions so titled in the private sector usually are responsible for meeting the challenges of competition and protecting market share. In the Internet age, most research is more conveniently and comprehensively conducted on one's personal computer... In order to justify their existence and protect their jobs, are librarians "strategically" responding by replacing quality reading matter with comic books, popular video tapes and DVDs, hip-hop CDs and the like, dropping their standards to pander to the lowest common denominator? Should libraries be in the business of competing with Blockbuster? Is this really how we want to spend our tax dollars?

...Should public libraries be the willing purveyors of soft porn to kids? Apparently, the American Library Association believes the answer to that question is "yes." Here's its official statement on "Free Access to Libraries for Minors":

...The American Library Association opposes all attempts to restrict access to library services, material and facilities based on the age of library users."...

There ought to be something we can do locally to change that.