Kathleen de la Pena McCook writes “Aghast that the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library buys DVDs, a Republican County Commissioner, Ronda Storms has led a battle to censor their purchase. In his Tampa Tribune column, You There! Library Patron! Stop That Fun! Daniel Ruth characterizes Storms as the ‘Madame Defarge of the Dewey Decimal System;(here’s a bit more background on Storms). Ruth goes on to note,”it’s perfectly fine to enter the portals of a public library and – yes, it’s true – have some fun.”
Commissioners recommended 6-1 that the library spend a larger portion of its DVD budget on educational videos and less on pure entertainment.”
Jackass: the elected
On January 22, 1918, the Manitoba movie censor board banned comedies, claiming they make audiences too frivolous.
Heavens forbid that people should be allowed to entertain themselves when they could be down at the mosque bowing and scraping before Allah. We must outlaw applause and paper bags!
Oops . . . oh, wait. That was the Taliban.
In any event, on first blush I’d write off Storms as an anal-retentive, power-tripping control freak.
One surprising facet to the article…
…was the reference to the Foursquare Gospel Church’s founder of all things (Aimee Semple McPherson). That was quite unexpected.
Admittedly, I like to check out (when I can) seasons of shows on DVD so that if I start watching them I can find out the back story. Such also is useful for church work, amazingly enough, when I need to find dramatic exammples to support things I am talking about. I do watch educational materials from time to time but have not found much to watch of interest as of late.
hmmm…
With all due respect to librarians everywhere I sometimes wonder when certain arguements are made about whether the person making them is a public librarian or another type.
The DVD question has been going on for a while. Actually it was originally just a video in general question. Its easy to say that yes we can and should provide videos for entertainment but we also have to cover all the other reasons we buy any material, information and education. But budgets only stretch so far and asking for more money to buy more of the latest blockbuster is a tough sell. And let’s be clear here, no public librarian worth their salt can look at a town budget and see what other departments get and think we’ll ever be funded consistently to the point where will always have what’s new and popular always at hand.
DVD’s have reamped the debate because of headaches with the format. They seem to get trashed quicker than CDs (the larger packaging doesn’t help) and of course there’s theft. Smaller libraries don’t want the headache. We’re also right on that tipping point where VHS is almost out completely but a lot of libraries still feel it necessary to purchase for both formats. So even larger libraries are splitting the money.
Let me throw in one more random thought. If public libraries are going to remain vital we need to be prepared for when the video and dvd audience drops off the radar. On Demand cable is going to redefine viewing habits and probably eliminate the need for popular video collections. The rapidly growing stats we see in our AV collections are the equivalent of the dot.com bubble. Be ready when it bursts.