The Cumberland County (N.C.) Public Library board approved Director Jerry Thrasher’s recommendation May 27 to offer parents the option of a juvenile card that would limit borrowing privileges for youngsters up to age 15 to materials housed in the children’s area. The decision was made at a meeting that gained national attention May 25 when radio-talk-show host and library critic Dr. Laura Schlessinger urged people to attend. Some 75 came to the standing-room-only meeting.
Trustees voted 6–1 in favor of the change after Thrasher said the optional card would “meet the basic needs of parents without jeopardizing the community’s First Amendment freedoms,” the Fayetteville Observer-Times reported May 28.
The decision fell short for area resident Daniel Barton, who started a letter-writing campaign to officials in January about the “descriptive sexual encounters” in Knowing by Rosalyn McMillan after his fiance’s 15-year-old daughter borrowed it. The new policy “doesn’t stop children from looking at pornography in the library and then xeroxing it,” he stated after the meeting.
Posted May 31, 1999.