[Lupigis]

Got this article in the mail. Is this kind of thing common in the US or is it an isolated incident?

Quote

Sharon Cook is either a hero or a villain.
She is either due your thanks for doing everything in her power to protect children from obscenity or she is due your disdain for wantonly taking away the constitutional rights of the people of Jessamine County.
She never meant to do the latter. She absolutely meant to do the former.

It all started in the fall of 2008, and she is still doing it. The proof is in her knapsack, in a bright yellow flexible file folder, hidden from prying eyes. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume IV: The Black Dossier. It has pink and yellow highlighter tags sticking out, marking the pages that contain explicit sexual content.
It is the Jessamine County Public Library's copy, which she has checked out and not returned. She is being fined 10 cents a day for her breach of library contract — and for her moral stand.

She was, she says, simply appalled that a child could find a book that contained so many outright visually obscene graphics in the Jessamine library where she worked. So nine months ago, she challenged its right to be included in the collection, and when that failed, she simply checked it out herself.

In effect, she removed the book from circulation. She checked it out over and over and over with her library card until a patron of the library, unaware of the circumstances of the book, put a hold on it, asking to be the next in line to check it out.
When Cook went to renew The Black Dossier on Sept. 21, the computer would not allow it because of the hold. Cook used her employee privileges to find out that the patron desiring the book was an 11-year-old girl.
This would not do.

[polishgenius]

That's a really odd one. Because 11 is too young for someone to be reading League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but the woman's barging into affairs not her business (not to mention if someone spied on my personal information using 'employee priviliges' and made their own judgements about my life I'd be livid).

Libraries are generally rubbish about classifying comics though. Mind you, comic classification as a whole is a bit shit.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 10 November 2009 - 12:00 PM

[Werthead]

As pointed out in the article, children of the age of 11 are not supposed to be in a library by themselves and aren't supposed to check things out unsupervised, which seems a sensible precaution.

It seems to boil down to the women thinking that all comics/graphic novels are for kids and that is it, whilst that idea went out the window over thirty years ago?

[rabbits]

see these sorts of things always just make me wonder.. where are these libraries that check out comics?! the only thing mine seems to stock is right wing polemics and murder mysteries..


I think this is unfortunately another case of people not accepting the fact that comic books as a medium are no longer a " Kids medium " but an across the board medium.. Perhaps next time if they don't want sexually explicit material in the library.. it would do better to research the items you are purchasing.. to stock in your library!

This post has been edited by rabbits: 10 November 2009 - 12:30 PM

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I can check out "Watchmen" here in the buckel of the Bible Belt.

[Tom Eckert]

I know nobody here is disagreeing (yet?), but what these two women did is out of line.

1. An 11-year old has to be supervised. Presumably, if there's no obvious supervision, they could have simply refused to check something out to her. (Maybe not.) Even with supervision, they could have made sure the parent was aware.
2. It's not up to them to decide to remove the book. They put in a request for removal, and it was denied.
3. I think there are far better ways of raising awareness or limiting access to this book than simply indefinitely checking it out. As the article states, the other public library in the area who had the GN put it under adult fiction, rather than with "Young Adult" fiction. (As rabbits mentioned, this is probably a sign for the libraries to review their perspectives on GN and GN locations.)
4. Who approved the book for purchase in the first place? Presumably someone did -- it wasn't just requested by a library patron and then it magically showed up on the shelf. Had no library staff looked at it from the time the request came in until this woman saw it?
5. I would be pissed if I were the girl who'd put it on hold, or her parents. You can recommend all you like, but you do not get to decide what I do or do not read. Especially when you deny me and offer no explanation!
6. I understand that the one woman was never told it was a firing offense. However, she'd been challenged once, and the book was put back into circulation. What did she think was going to happen? At best she would have been disciplined, kept her job, and the book *still* would have been put back into circulation.

[Lupigis]

Werthead, on Nov 10 2009, 18.09, said:

As pointed out in the article, children of the age of 11 are not supposed to be in a library by themselves

Really? Peggy Leef seems to think the same thing.

My 9 year old daughter has her own liprary card and is allowed to go the local library (800 m away by bike path) on her own. I ask her what she has borrowed when she gets back, but I wouldn't dream of checking if she tells the truth or anything like that!

[niamh ni Forlán]

Sharon Cook is a big hypocrite who is just a closet fan of obscene graphics and gets a kick out of it, and when caught, invented a good christian bullshit reason for her perversity.

[niamh ni Forlán]

woops

This post has been edited by niamh O'Toole: 10 November 2009 - 01:16 PM

[alguien]

Haven't gotten around to reading Black Dossier, but have read the first two League books. Very fun, clever stuff. But it probably isn't appropriate for 11 year-olds. Frankly, I'd been sort of amazed and impressed if they understood all the pulp homages in the thing anyway. But yes, due to the explicit content, not for little kids, IMO

That said, I don't think anyone's arguing that. And I definitely don't believe what these ladies did is appropriate. At all. Its one thing to call a child's parent to let them know that the book might be questionable, its another thing to become a book vigilante. In fact, all this does is raise the level of notoriety for the book (though probably not to the level of Lost Girls), which probably goes against their purposes anyway.

This little tid-bit definitely provides a little illumination to the woman's mindset:

Quote

"People prayed over me while I was reading it because I did not want those images in my head," she says.

I can taste the Fundamentalist crazy from here.

[Jurble]

pfft, by 11 I was reading ASoIaF along with a bunch of explicit fantasy/sci-fi series. Also internet. So porn too.

[niamh ni Forlán]

Lupigis, on Nov 10 2009, 17.58, said:

Really? Peggy Leef seems to think the same thing.

My 9 year old daughter has her own liprary card and is allowed to go the local library (800 m away by bike path) on her own. I ask her what she has borrowed when she gets back, but I wouldn't dream of checking if she tells the truth or anything like that!

My reading was never supervised even once in my whole life.
I'm quite sane.

[Slurktan]

rabbits, on Nov 10 2009, 12.29, said:

see these sorts of things always just make me wonder.. where are these libraries that check out comics?! the only thing mine seems to stock is right wing polemics and murder mysteries..


I think this is unfortunately another case of people not accepting the fact that comic books as a medium are no longer a " Kids medium " but an across the board medium.. Perhaps next time if they don't want sexually explicit material in the library.. it would do better to research the items you are purchasing.. to stock in your library!

Your library doesn't check out graphic novels? They seem to a be a growing market at least in regular book stores around here but that could just purely be a local phenomenon.

Black Dossier from what I've read and seen of it is definitely not for kids though. Regardless I don't see why a minor couldn't loan it out, that same 11 year old could go borrow Lady Chatterly's Lover for instance with no issues.

[Raidne]

Peggy Leef, on Nov 10 2009, 12.43, said:

6. I understand that the one woman was never told it was a firing offense. However, she'd been challenged once, and the book was put back into circulation. What did she think was going to happen? At best she would have been disciplined, kept her job, and the book *still* would have been put back into circulation.

I don't think that's really true. I'd bet it was made quite clear at some point that using employee privileges to access library patrons personal information for their own private use was grounds for termination.

When you think about it, looking up someone's personal data to determine if their reading material is appropriate, and then taking away their ability to access it is a pretty freaking big deal. Just a little thought experiment - pretend that she did the same thing on some basis other than age.

Lupigis, on Nov 10 2009, 12.58, said:

My 9 year old daughter has her own liprary card and is allowed to go the local library (800 m away by bike path) on her own. I ask her what she has borrowed when she gets back, but I wouldn't dream of checking if she tells the truth or anything like that!

So do you want the library to remove everything that someone might find to be objectionable for a 9 year old? I hope not.

I can see making a case for not wanting your library to carry obscene materials. Fortunately, this book has won enough critical praise that it's literary and artistic value are not even close to being in question. Therefore, it's not obscene, and totally appropriate for inclusion in the library's collection. Case closed.

What I really love is their stupid, misguided argument about community standards. That's only one aspect of the test, and one that would only apply if the work lacked all artistic and literary value.

You know, a lot of people would argue that Stephen King isn't appropriate for kids either, but I read It when I was 12, and so did a lot of other people my age. I've never read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, so maybe it's a lot more disturbing than a 12 year old getting raped by their father and a 5 year old getting eaten by an evil clown, but I doubt it.

[alguien]

Jurble, on Nov 10 2009, 13.21, said:

pfft, by 11 I was reading ASoIaF along with a bunch of explicit fantasy/sci-fi series. Also internet. So porn too.

You were a much more mature 11 year old than me. Although, when I was 11, ASoIaF hadn't come out yet. (nor the Internet) I think my most scandalous might have been Dragonlance or some crap like that. But then, I was the oldest and came from a fairly strict household.

If I had kids, I don't think I'd be comfortable with them reading Black Dossier, which has a lot of explicit scenes, at 11. At least not until they were a bit older. But that'd be my call/resposibility as a parent.

In any event, certainly don't think the book should be censored.

[Jurble]

I couldn't you know, actually use the porn at age 11. But I looked at it.

[Tom Eckert]

Lupigis, et al: As pointed out in the article, that particular library has the following rules: 17 and younger need parental permission to get a library card, and 11 and under are to be supervised by a parent or guardian. It's not that *I* think that an 11-year old has to be supervised (I wasn't always), but that the library where all of this is occurring does.

Raidne, fair point. I was going based on the woman's claim in the article. And, you know, maybe it's hedging the truth a bit -- I can understand if they didn't feel the need to specify that doing the same thing that got her in trouble the first time would get her in trouble the second time, but that other actions (for the very valid reasons you point out) would have been brought to her attention as sackable offenses.

Nadie - I actually thought the same, but then decided it ultimately didn't have to do with why I object to the censorship. It does make it harder for me to put myself in her shoes, though, that's for sure. :P

[Raidne]

Yeah, Eef is right about those being separate issues, really. Still, I think it's funny how there's no rhyme or reason to what parents will let their kids read. My Mom is a Christian fundamentalist who wouldn't let me watch R rated movies until...well, honestly I don't even know when that became okay, 14?, but was fine with me reading pretty much anything starting with when I was about 11. She recommended The Stand to me when I was 13. I think she bought it for me - the extended version with all the weird stuff about the Kid. And she gave me her Danielle Steele novels. *shudders* Before that, I was reading Nancy Drew, The Babysitters Club, and Sleepover Friends.

I think it's funny that given all of that, she still objected to me reading Cosmopolitan when I was 15/16.

At any rate, as there is no rhyme or reason to parental censorship, clearly it's something we should let families be illogical about on their own.

[Mentat]

Nadie, on Nov 10 2009, 19.12, said:

Haven't gotten around to reading Black Dossier, but have read the first two League books. Very fun, clever stuff. But it probably isn't appropriate for 11 year-olds. Frankly, I'd been sort of amazed and impressed if they understood all the pulp homages in the thing anyway. But yes, due to the explicit content, not for little kids, IMO

I have, and it's a great book. It contains the only P.G. Wodehouse/H.P. Lovecraft crossover I know of!

But it's definitely not for an 11 year old. I don't think it would be responsible for a librarian to let an unaccompanied minor check this out.

[Shryke]

How long has this been going on?

With the Toronto Public Library, they give you about 2 months of over-due fines, then they charge you a straight up like $100 fee, suspend your account, write the book off as lost and buy a new copy.