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Sports Illustrated Decides Libraries Don’t Need Swimsuit IssueLibrarians on Publib and other discussion lists discovered in the first week of March that none of them had received the February 14 “swimsuit issue” of Sports Illustrated. Inquiries to Time Warner eventually resulted in a statement from spokesman Rick McCabe that the company had withheld shipment of that issue to libraries and schools because for years the magazine had received complaints that the issue was too risqu��.“In the past, we have gotten lots of feedback from parents, teachers, and librarians about the content possibly not being appropriate for librarians,” McCabe said in the March 9 Los Angeles Times. Lynne Weaver, serials coordinator at Randolph Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, told the Times that “everybody’s furious” that the school had no say on whether it could receive the issue. “If for any reason we would choose not to get an issue, that’s up to us,” she said. American Library Association President Leslie Burger called Time Warner’s decision “patronizing and paternalistic in the extreme.” In a March 9 statement she said, “Limiting access to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in response to alleged, anonymous, and amorphous expressions of concern is an infringement of the First Amendment rights of library users and an unwarranted attempt to censor the materials available in our nation’s libraries.” The Sports Illustrated Customer Service department said in a March 8 posting on the Serialst discussion list that subscriptions to libraries and schools were automatically extended by one issue, but that the swimsuit issue could be requested by calling 800-528-5000 or visiting the magazine’s website. Posted March 9, 2007; revised March 12, 2007. |
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