porn and pedaphiles at the library

[depechemodefan]

I probably mentioned before that now at the library we can tell people not to look at porn. I should be a nominal expert, being that I have a degree is Sociology, and one of my proffesors was Dr. William Simon, who was one of the collaborators on Playboy Advisor. Porn is hard to define. Personally, anything that is salacious and is meant to stimulate the sex organs is porn. I can see someone looking at a medical website to look at a picture of a person's privates with syphilus infection as being educational, but looking at two men giving a woman a money shot isn't educational. The other day a guy was looking at some fetish films. The women wern't naked. And mostly it seemed more silly fun (like a guy tickling a woman's feet with a feather as her feet are in stocks) then erotic. Porn or not porn? I just left the guy alone but I told security it case it escalated.

I should add another story. Back before CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) the librarians couldn't tell people not to look at porn. So one day I was giving a tour to a really nice group of middle school students. I go up to the third floor to show the books for scholarships and colleges and the 6 computers were in use by patrons, and all the men on the computers were looking at porn. Five men turned off the computers, got up and left, when they saw the school group. The sixth guy kept on looking at the pic of an erect penis. I asked a co-worker to tell him if he could please stop looking at porn while the group was here. My co-worker (and 90% of my co-workers are pussies) said "well, if the group isn't going to stay up here I won't tell him anything."
So here's the poor teacher trying to get them to look the other way and the group was giggling.

Another time a school came in with their students to do research. There was a group of some girls and their male teacher was showing them an index to find articles. He was saying something like, "With this index you can find stories about bras and underwear." A patron heard this and complained to a librarian who talked to another teacher and the school's prinicpal showed up, because what the teacher said was inappropriate. I'm pretty much sure the assignment wasn't on underwear. I forgot the exact words he used, but it wasn't like vulgar words but there were bad word choices.

[looney_librarian]

I understand completely man. Our library has a policy that as long as no one complains, we can't ask them to trun off the porn. Even then we have to ask at least 3 times before we ask them to leave.

[reimero]

The library at which I used to work was exactly the opposite: they pre-emptively voted to put in filters (which could be bypassed on request) because any computer could be used by minors. And we had fun a-plenty with that. Certain patrons were particularly adept at finding computers which had no filters. And for awhile, the override password was common knowledge to everyone, as evidenced by the sticky notes we found under the keyboards.

Ahh, good times!

[MrSmiley]

Just so you know... your post had to do with porn yes, but not pedophillia.

But yeah... I'm even disgusted by the people at the library who are trading instant messages back and forth or playing flash games... Porn is just a big no-no. However one thing that can help lessen these distractions (they're distracting to me as a patron. Though on the other hand, I sometimes bring my laptop at the library and for all I know my OpenOffice window on a custom Windows theme is bugging other people because it doesn't look "normal") are view filters for the monitors which basically block the light of the image from most angles except dead-on in front. I know that quite a few offices employ them to prevent "confidential computer systems" images at the front desk or what not being seen by customers or even other snoopy co-workers.

Of course that might get in the way of the patrolling you librarians might have to do as part of your job description. Though personally I'd wonder why a public library computer network doesn't have software on it allowing someone at the desk to instantly pull up the screen of any public computer on her own monitor.... and of course, notices attached to each computer warning that their privacy may be violated in this way.

Er... sorry for the "follow-my-train-of-thought" posting.

[MrSmiley]

The library at which I used to work was exactly the opposite: they pre-emptively voted to put in filters (which could be bypassed on request) because any computer could be used by minors. And we had fun a-plenty with that. Certain patrons were particularly adept at finding computers which had no filters. And for awhile, the override password was common knowledge to everyone, as evidenced by the sticky notes we found under the keyboards.

Ahh, good times!

In that case I'd just implement a policy to change the password weekly Especially if you let all the workers come up with suggestions and pull them out of a hat. Passwords can be fun!

[HowMayIHelpMe?]

Not that there's anything wrong with porn (for the record, there is nothing wrong with porn), but wouldn't you think that viewing hardcore porn would be a personal thing, something you maybe share with just a loved one, and at home?
It just seems a bit weird for a guy to be looking at it at a library where he runs the risk of earning the scorn of people walking by who just might, mistakenly, think that there is something wrong with porn?

[KellyHabersham]

We used to have a few regular patrons who were known for using library computers to look at porn (one guy figured out how to get online before we officially had Internet access), but that pretty much stopped once we got system-wide filtering software.

[Mr. Security]

Well at the library I do security at they are pretty strict about porn viewing. They have a 3 strike rule

1st Offense: Your asked to log out, your card number is recorded and your given a verbal warning

2nd Offense: You receive a written warning

3rd Offense: Your account is suspended for a period of time. Usually a few months


For the most part it's rare that someone does get there account suspended. They either get the hint not to look at porn at the library or they get better at hiding that they are

[Polenicus]

See, that's why I like us in Security having the final say on this.

We run the 24 hour computer lab. We catch you viewing porn once, we check your ID, and tell you in no uncertain terms if it happens again you're leaving (And if no valid ID, you ARE leaving, NOW). We catch you again, and you are leaviong for the day, and the Dean of your program is notified.

You wanna look at porn? Do it at home. Load up your home computer with viruses and spyware. These machines are for schoolwork, thanks.

[Sorianna]

Creepy. I mean, there's nothing inherently wrong with porn, but it's gotta be some kinda pervy exhibitionism to watch it where other people can see you. I mean, that's just... inappropriate.

So I guess I should be grateful that our library has a filter, I can't even get on Deviant Art at my library. Frustrating, but considering the stuff some people put up there... I'm ok with it.

It's really frustrating when the filters won't let me get on my online store to go on my occasional shopping spree. Especially since the only reason I can think of that anyone would block it is because it's a Pagan store... Guess I'm too close to the bible belt.

Sorry about the off-topic-ness of the last bit, I was just reminded...

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

damn, can't these guys go buy a magazine? Sheesh.

However, I think that viewing porn at a library might be a sort of safer way to be an exhibitionist, in a way. Better than jacking off.

Oh-wait. We're talking about SC's, right? lol.

[Bramblerose]

but looking at two men giving a woman a money shot isn't educational.

I've heard that some folk do consider that educational, much to teh annoyance of their girlfriends.

I suspect the guy who kept looking at the penis for the kids to see could be charged with some sort of pedophilia. Keep in mind the case where the HS teacher let some student on her computer. The student went to a porn site, and I gather it was one of those that leaves traces on the browser, so when the teacher popped it up for something for the class to see and found porn? Yikes. I believe she was fired for this. At teh very least she was suspended. I thin this is awfully harsh for trusting the wrong kid.

[reimero]

In that case I'd just implement a policy to change the password weekly Especially if you let all the workers come up with suggestions and pull them out of a hat. Passwords can be fun!

Actually, that's exactly what I did

[mattm04]

Our local library has a special children computer lab. This lab can only be used by students of the local public schools. They have to log on to the PC's using their school username/pswd. This connections is filtered and they can also connect to the schools file servers.

The other PC's are filtered and you need to ask a librarian to remove the filter and that only lasts fro a certain period of time before the filter comes back on. It prevents the PC's for being tied up by people watching porn all day.

[depechemodefan]

The pedophilia part is meant for the teacher telling the girl students that they can look up articles about underware and bras. And the patron gets upset and get teachers and librarians involved. I don't know if it was just a bad word choise on the part of the teacher (maybe his mind was on the new Victoria Secret catalog) but with the principal getting called in, I think the customer thougth pedophila was involved; just overblowing the situation.

We had those screens that are place on the monitor to make it hard for people next to that computer to see what is going on. We don't have them now, once we opened the new building.

Ah, we do have a system where we can add time to computers if a patron comes up to the librarian to do it. So patrons can't do it. But now they go get mulitple cards. But I keep track, and have fun deleting cards/decreasing minutes, hee But that was with this new software; before we added min. by going to the computer and punching in a code on the keyboard. Literally, the day IT changed the password was the same day one of our regulars (who would give himself some insane minutes, like 11,000) memorized it.

I remember one day this woman needed help, I forgot what, and I saw she was reading porn fanfic. I only saw porn fanfic once, which I guess is hard to notice since it's just words on the computers.

Oh, and then when patrons could freeze the computers there were many a time the computer was frozen on porn. ugh.

In our re-opened library, we have a seperate teen and seperate children's dept. No adults in the teen room, though adults can come in and find a book and leave. So that works out great. Before, they allowed adults in the Children's room. and the adults would spend all day on the terminals, looking at their yahoo mail and other stuff.

S[peaking of magazines, we have copies of Playboy, and before we reopened we had regulars who would request the latest and return the issue about 10 min. latter. Once we get Playboy on microfilm (now biannually) we recycle the old copies. So now we have Playboy on b&w film. I think only 1 times these past 9 years someone requested it from me on microfilm,