Re: Waters Quotation

Pierre Gregoire (pgregoire@dupage.k12.il.us)
Tue, 04 Aug 1998 14:42:35 -0500

A continually confounding issue. The paradox of supporting freedom of
information in our libraries re: textual sources vs. age appropriate videos?
IMHO the average eight year old would ask for "Naked Lunch" (or more likely
Stephen King) to carry around and impress his/her friends, not to actually
read. Does the video information require less conscious will by the child to
acquire (once it is requested)? And therefore is it less acceptable to provide
the video to the eight year old because she/he is more likely to view it than
read an equivalently problematic text?

Pierre Gregoire, MLIS
Director,
Audio Visual Institute of DuPage
Regional Media Library for the Students & Teachers
of DuPage County, IL
http://www.dupage.k12.il.us/avid

Kristine R. Brancolini wrote:

> The August 1998 issue of American Libraries has a quotation from John
> Waters' Video Round Table speech (I guess you could call it that) on page
> 23: "Kids should be allowed to read anything they want. If an 8-year-old
> is old enough to ask for _Naked Lunch_, he's old enough to read it."
>
> But is he old enough to watch the movie? We should have asked John *that*
> question...
>
> Kristine Brancolini
> Indiana University Libraries