Gwinnett County, Georgia, solicitor Gerald Blaney has declined the county library board's June 8 request for his legal opinion of whether The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll is harmful to minors according to state statute and therefore inappropriate for the library's collection.
At a public meeting that attracted "about 30 interested people," Blaney explained to trustees August 4 that, as a prosecutor, "reviewing a truckload of books wasn't in his job description," Library Director Jo Ann Pinder told American Libraries. Blaney said he called the public meeting to facilitate a discussion among trustees about the problem of their reviewing the legality of individual library items.
The title remains on the library's shelves, where it has been since a patron objected on January 17 to the audiotape version of Carroll's biography about his troubled youth.
Posted August 10, 1998.