Legally the Librarian can't tell Mr. Porn man to not look at porn -- believe me it's still gross. Anywho, In all the libraries that I've worked in (4 different buildings) there are creepy people who look up porn....see Dear Abbey of today to catch my point.
Yes, s/he can. If it's in library policy, libraries have a legal right to expel anyone who is doing anything inappropriate, including looking at porn. In fact, there is a law (CIPA) that says computers in libraries must be filtered in order for the library to get money for Internet from the government. Some libraries don't comply with this because they believe computers should not be filtered, and they can get money from other sources. There is a fine line between censorship and intellectual freedom--it all depends on which side of the line the library falls on.
By law anyone who is a member of CAMLS or NOLA -- which encompasses all CLEVNET and CCPL libraries, as well as the Mentor Public Library (which it's illegal to expel under local ordinance) may not expel patrons for porn. Even private libraries, for example, a college library, may not expel patrons for this action. We can ask patrons to use discretion, but that's about it, at least under Ohio state funding laws (i.e. there is no money)--it's up for discussion right now in Columbus. There's a site, off of the Ohio Library Information Network and perhaps OPLIN that discusses the issue--it was about a month ago that I saw this, so I'm not sure specifically what the link is; the only library that I know of locally that directly disobeys this "statute" is the GCPL.
Well, maybe that's why I was unaware of this, because I work for GCPL. All my research for my last Internet policy paper stated that there were no specific laws against expelling/not expelling for porn, and that it depended on local library policy. I also work for Akron, and we recently did expel someone who was doing it. Mea culpa. May I ask who you are?
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Patrons who look at porn do suck. :-P
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