Go Ask Dr. Laura?
RSSby Renée Olson, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 06/01/1999
While her rants make my skin crawl, they raise essential questions
These days, working in libraries with young people and the Internet is a lot like walking a tightrope yanked periodically by a maniacal circus worker below.
By accusing the American Library Association (ALA) of peddling pornography to children, Dr. Laura, talk radio's garrulous arbiter of morality, is the most recent person to grab hold of the rope and pull, hoping librarians will take a tumble. See Story
When library resources and services are attacked, rushing to action is a natural response. Yet, what's needed most is restraint and clear thinking. Although it seems we've been living with the Internet forever, it's still a mere infant. As Lawrence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, writes in the April 28 New York Times, "The point to remember is that basic constitutional principles do not arise and disappear as each new technology comes on the scene."
In the end, our society stands only to gain intellectually by giving its next generation open access to information, in part through an unfettered Internet.
Still, when embracing one core value of librarianship -- intellectual freedom -- we shouldn't lose touch with another towering principle for librarians who work with young people: recommending materials that match a young person's reading level and developmental needs.
What's gotten Dr. Laura worked into a lather is one such recommendation for a health information Web site called "Go Ask Alice" on "Teen Hoopla," a list of sites recommended by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) for 12- to 18-year-olds. A Columbia University project, "Alice" offers frank, reliable information for high school and college students, but some of it -- for example, on "rimming" -- may be more than some curious 12-year-olds have in mind.
By creating a list of sites that have to work for such a large age span, YALSA set itself an impossible task. If it had chosen not to include "Alice," it would have been professionally remiss in serving older teens. By including it, the association is recommending a site that is out of sync with the needs of many of "Teen Hoopla"'s youngest users.
Resist for a moment the urge to label me a censor.
I am not suggesting that librarians deny young adults access to information. I'm not even suggesting that "Alice" be taken off "Teen Hoopla" as long as the list continues to serve the same age range.
Instead, let's remember that there is a distinction between making information available (i.e., offering Internet access) and recommending resources. The first is rather mindless; the second calls expertise into play. Hundreds of thousands of librarians match young people with materials daily, based on whether they're struggling readers, whether they need advanced information on a topic, or whether they've hit puberty with a vengeance.
Yet I've seen little respect for this skill among our profession's staunchest intellectual freedom supporters, especially during any noisy materials challenge. Comfortable only in a simplified world where all information is equal, they fail to recognize that a highly skilled librarian may choose to recommend a resource to one teen -- if it matches that teen's needs -- and choose not to recommend it to the next.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that recommending materials is so routine as to be unimportant. Protect your expertise from those who would inhibit it in their zeal to gut your collection of all but pabulum. But guard it as well from those in our field who, in their quest to defend intellectual freedom to the outside world, would sacrifice your decision-making skills.
Ultimately, your goal is to recommend what will truly engage a young person, a philosophy that comes straight from Ranganathan's Third Law: Every reader his book.
Or, in this case, Web site.
Renée Olson
Editor-in-Chief
rolson@slj.cahners.com
