Assistant Professor, Information School, University of Washington.
intlib@ischool.washington.edu
Column for September 2003
Crap. There was so much I could have written about on June 23. The warmth of the day in Toronto, mirrored by the warmth of our Canadian colleague-hosts at the ALA/CLA Annual Conference there. The interesting tidbits I picked up at the OCLC luncheon. The hope that sufficient outcry had been heard to get ALA to fix its embarrassingly wretched and unusable website. The Blue Jays game we attended. (We had a great time in Toronto, by the way, and I hope the conference goes back there soon.)
But instead, I have to write about stupid CIPA, and the decision in United States v. ALA. How ironic and sad that we got the news about the decision smack in the middle of the conference. I saw former ALA president Ann Symons looking stricken in the conference center foyer five minutes after hearing the news, and President Maurice Freedman gamely giving interviews outside the ALA store.
And this is decidedly not the CIPA column I was looking forward to. Instead of “What will they come up with next?” it’s “Where do we go from here?” and “What do we do now?”
Good questions. The short answer is that we will do what we always do: the best we can for our users and communities. I know we will make this thing as palatable as possible within the law; inform our clientele about what is and isn’t going on; and, I sincerely hope, work to reverse this dimwitted legislation or at least disable it with further judicial or legislative challenges.
The choice now facing public librarians sounds like something I’d come up with as an exercise in one of my classes: Do you take the money, vital support in a time of real economic peril, or stand up for a core professional belief? It’s diabolical, like some demented version of Let’s Make a Deal. Which is more important for the long and short term, money or principle? Every public library and governing board will have to figure this out for itself, and the fragmented decision means we are still waiting to discover what the upshot will be.
Last month’s American Libraries was full of news and suggestions for how to deal with this. Some libraries, looking at the expense and bother of software, training, maintenance, staff time, and so on, will decide to just forgo the money and refuse to install filtering software. Others will likely swallow hard and do what they can to adhere both to the letter of the law and their commitment to the public.
In thinking about this, though, I want to offer up this little bit of heresy. Maybe the Supremes did us a favor, in a grotesque way. Over the last decade or so, we have woven the Internet into libraries and librarianship in such a tight way—even more than when CIPA and its predecessor laws were passed—and this decision raises the question of whether we can extract it now, or even if we should. Or is it such an integral part of the fabric of library service we now have to think of it yet again with fresh eyes?
Can you legitimately have a public library without unfettered public Internet access for adults? This may well be the central intellectual challenge to the librarians of this generation. It’s unfortunate that it has been provoked in this way, but that doesn’t diminish the power, or potential impact, of the question. Think on’t.
I want to be sure to extend my congratulations and gratitude to ALA for pursuing this matter, intellectually and financially; to the superb folks at the Multnomah County (Oreg.) Library for filing the challenge to CIPA that was later consolidated with ALA’s case; and to the ACLU for all its hard work in arguing the case both at the district court and federal levels. Ann Beeson and Chris Hansen were my contacts at the ACLU as I was preparing my expert testimony on behalf of Multnomah, and their professionalism and dedication made my small role in this proceeding as easy as it could be. (Ask me sometime about trying to get through security to a federal office with a civil-liberties lawyer.)
And, lest academic-library colleagues get too smug about this: What if a state legislator or university trustee got it into his head that such a law might be a keen idea for them as well? I mean, we wouldn’t want our young people corrupted, and the Supreme Court said it was okay, right? It wouldn’t fly (I hope); however, it also wouldn’t help. But that’s another story.