Censoring of requests, longish problem

[Barbara Wall <bawall@ALDUS.NORTHNET.ORG>]

Dear Friends,

I am a library administrator in an educational cooperative.  We coordinate
efforts among 43 school libraries in our county or system.  Students come
to the BOCES (the coop campus) for vo-tech classes and spend half days at
their home schools.  We ahve an active LPN nursing program as well as
several others that require students to do research.  At the system office
we do searches for students (not always enough equipment to allow them to
do all  searches!) and for schools as well.  The problem:  a student came
and asked for information about pornography - a female student - and one
of my aides who does not work in the library part of my job was upset and
mentioned this at lunch to the student's instructor and head of the student
programs division.    I now have an instructor telling me not to give any
student information that is not directly class related and certainly not
to give any student books or magazines that have to do with pornography.
The instructor apparently thought I was going to check out to the student
some kind of magazine relating to pornography.  I told her we did not have
any magazines or books, period except those from the  nursing library and
that the search was for citations.  Naturally I have had a long discussion
with my employee who did not realize she opened her mouth and should have
kept it closed.  Have provided employee with all kinds of Intell Freedom
materials, and explained about the privacy of searches and first
ammendment rights.  But.... and here is the problem, how do I handle the
instructor and program manager who now want me to restrict all kinds of
materials?  My secretary and I are planning an education program , but any
other suggestions would be appreciated.  This can be very touchy because
we see ourselves as a library but the rest of the Coop doesn't necessarily
view us that way at all!   Thanks for any suggestions.

Barbara Wall
School Library System Director
Oswego County BOCES
Mexico (snow not sun), NY
bawall@northnet.org   or bwall@oswegoboces.org

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=
To quit LM_NET (or set NOMAIL or DIGEST), Send an email message to
    listserv@listserv.syr.edu    In the message write EITHER:
 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL or 3) SET LM_NET DIGEST
  * NOTE: Please allow time for confirmation from Listserv.
For LM_NET Help & Archives see:  http://ericir.syr.edu/lm_net/
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=