Having now had ten hours of sleep and in the four hours before I head off to the airport, my mind seems organized enough to throw out a few more thoughts on class.
Yesterday’s poster session was full of new ideas for me. Coming from the background of an art historian who never really expected to pursue LIS, I’m still catching up with the basic issues in the field. I know that as professionals, our goal is to subsume our opinions in a facade (however thin!) of neutrality but the fact is that I am also a parent, also a trained art historian (even if an MA doesn’t get one very far in the art history world!) and a human being. I do have opinions.
Censorship is probably one of the difficult ones for me as a parent, particularly the idea of censoring the internet, one of the poster topics covered. Perhaps as a fairly early adopter of the Internet for personal space (my very first, albeit rather unfortunate) static webpage was created with the help of a dear friend and Comp Sci major back in early 1996. I still didn’t entirely understand what the purpose of all this Internet Stuff [tm] was but I had fun with it nevertheless.
Information is important. Having access to information is important. I could see, even back then in the Dark Ages, that there were sites that children shouldn’t see. However, the question of whether or not it should be a library’s responsibility to censor, rather than a parent’s responsibility to teach, is a harder one (and my opinion probably goes quite contrary to what the vocal parents might be arguing). Of course my son is just three, and we’ve intentionally chosen not to teach him much about the computer except that it works beautifully as a vehicle for watching cartoons like Kipper the Dog (which he also loves on the printed page, I should add, as a responsible LIS student and parent!). He will learn more about computers, especially as my husband is a self-confessed computer geek, but we see it as our responsibility to teach him safe computer use, including things that I wish I’d known (like, my name brings up a personal social networking site, even though I’ve since changed it to a nickname instead, alas!).
It’s a tough topic for me to stay neutral on, even as a facade, because I will readily admit to being hugely opinionated and being extraordinarily stubborn (my son’s overwhelming stubbornness MAY have a genetic component). Learning how to turn that in a “safe” professional direction is one of my challenges.
