If you advertise the goriness/eroticism/violence/whatever of your materials on the catalogue, which items do you think your youngsters will look for first? And didn't we do the same when we were their age?
I may well be in a minority, but I'd rather focus on what it is we're trying to get our students to do, not what warnings we should be issuing. For example, some art books contain images that some might find contentious, let's say. In my view, part of education consists in encouraging students to develop a more adult approach to such material, to participate in discussion about what such images may be doing, and so on and so forth. As long as we're flagging the images up as - well, what exactly? - we encourage the titillation approach, in my view.
I don't believe, it will be clear by now, that certain material is, by its very nature, offensive (say). There may be certain uses that I find offensive and I am happy to discuss instances as they arise. But isn't the point of education to get us to see beyond labels, beyond surface matters?
On a more practical note, perhaps it's enough to let the parents of your younger students know that some materials may not be appropriate for their children: some will be covered by film classification schemes, for instance, others may not be, but that you have taken the view that to introduce your own forms of annotation will have the reverse of the intended effect.
Mark Callan
TyneMet College
-----Original Message-----
From: A general Library and Information Science list for news and discussion. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andy Wright
Sent: 02 April 2009 09:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: How do libraries manage AV recordings containing swearing, explicit and potentially offensive material
Hi all,
As AV Librarian I am responsible for selection, recording and
cataloguing of all AV recordings. In recent years it has become more
common for programmes to contain swearing, explicit and potentially
offensive material. Typical examples would be gratuitous swearing,
footage of dissections and gory injuries and graphic images of body
parts. In the past I have dealt with this by adding notes to the
catalogue entries and video/DVD boxes which advise the user about
potentially offensive content. Is this enough, especially considering we
have a number of 14-16 year olds attending our college?
I am contacting the list to investigate how other libraries deal with
this issue. I am particularly interested to hear from colleges who have
younger users (those 16 and younger), but I would welcome responses from
anyone.
Thanks in advance,
Andy Wright
Assistant Librarian - Audio-Visual Services
Calderdale College
Francis St
Halifax
West Yorkshire
HX1 3UZ
Tel: 01422 399350
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