LISNews: Librarian News

Here\'s a Story from Yahoo! (and Another from Wired)The U.S. Supreme Court said that a free-speech challenge by six professors to a VA law that bars public employees from using state computers to access porn on the Internet.

The profs argued the law violated their 1st Amendment \"academic freedom rights\" and would stop legitimate, work-related, intellectual inquiries.

So do this include Lego Porn?

Wired has this story on public employees in Virginia who are not allowed to access porn on their computers. Some professors say that it is against the law violates their first ammendment rights. I\'d love to see my old Psychology professors taking the dive into the world of pornography.\"The law, adopted in 1996, barred about 101,000 state employees, including faculty members, librarians and other researchers at state institutions, from using their state computers to access sites with sexually explicit content.

Sexually explicit is defined as any depiction or description of \"sexual excitement,\" \"sexual conduct,\" or \"a lewd exhibition of nudity.\"

Professors or other state employees must get written permission from their agency heads before accessing sexually explicit material.\" -- Read More

The LA Times has a Story on some books in CA. They say officials pulled 10 biographies of gay people from the shelves of a junior high campus. The ACLU cries censorship, while the school officials that pulled the books say the books reading level was too high for Orangeview students, and that the books presented a safety hazard because students who checked them out might be harassed by other students. How\'s that for a nifty excuse?The books are part of a series called \"Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians\".

\"We all know why these books have been banned,\" Matthews said. \"The books were banned because they had a positive statement to make to kids about gay and lesbian people. The books were banned because of deep-seated prejudice.\"

There is no date on This article at ProLifeInfo but at some point in the past the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library rejected the book \"Killer Angel\" on the grounds it is \"Too Political\". They say the ALA stood behind this decision.

\"When told of the ALA\'s stand on the controversy, Grant responded, \"Their position is simply Orwellian. In the name of intellectual freedom, they man the barricades anytime someone suggests the removal of child pornography from a library, but if anything conflicts with their political agenda, then censorship imposed by the library hierarchy is completely acceptable. They\'re encouraging libraries to set up their own Politburo to test books for political correctness.\"