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December 1, 2009

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Letter: Libraries’ stance on porn wrong

Friday, May 27, 2005 | 9:02 a.m.

Your May 22 editorial, headlined "Library porn? For children?", reminded me of a similar situation a few years back in Olympia, Wash. A friend and her child were going online at the library and the previous user had not logged off. She became rather upset as she had to close Web page after Web page of porn.

The library's response was that our patrons are free to view anything they want to online, in the library, using taxpayer-paid Internet connections. Any attempt at restricting access was viewed as censorship. This ignored the fact, of course, that citizens did not want to deny anyone Internet access to porn, but simply didn't feel it was proper inside the library.

The library in Tacoma, though, had a reasonable position on patron access to such material -- "Not here." Perhaps our librarians might want to think a bit more on this subject. While it might feel ennobling to claim to be defending the First Amendment, a closer reasoning shows that to not be the case.

WILLIAM EICHLER

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