dsudis:

earthdeep:

thelibrarina:

just wait until all the ao3 antis find out about

libraries

the fuck libraries u going to op

like, u know there is a degree of moderation there, right? someone has to order the books to stock in the library. a library that lets any old creep stash their hastily scribbled shota pwp in between the shelves is a library that’s going to be shut down p quick. by the police. for providing ppl with child porn. (and yes if a picture of a tree or a description of a tree can make someone experience a tree, then the same can be said about a picture or description of a child in a sexual situation ffs)

I mean there’s like a million other logistical differences, and idk who checks erotica out of a library, but hey ppl can be wild abt these things

Hooboy. Well, as a librarian who has worked in many varieties of libraries, let me… try to… respond to this from a library and librarian perspective.

(photograph from the interior of the Library of Congress)

1) It is true that libraries have a process to go through for accepting materials, and that there is a degree of selectivity involved–this is because libraries have limited budgets, limited physical space, and limited staff to process and manage materials. 

So, yes, any random junk written and left in the library would be thrown out. Not because the library would be concerned about its liability if anyone should see it; because we like to keep the library clean and organized, and leaving stuff on the shelf is not how we add things to the collection (how would they get CATALOGUED and LABELED???) And, of course, any adult attempting to show pornography (or, say, themselves) to actual children would be Removed From The Library because this would involve actual children being harmed by an actual adult in direct contact with them. Police do not shut down the libraries where this happens. They arrest the people harming the children.

Meanwhile, libraries spend VAST SUMS OF MONEY and ENDLESS STAFF HOURS to keep copies of Fifty Shades of Gray on the shelves where children actually can find them quite readily (and have them checked out on their library cards if mom’s has too many fines). Same with Last Tango in Paris and Flowers in the Attic and Year’s Best Erotica collections. (And Bibles, which get stolen at a ridiculous pace. I don’t know why, we were just forever having to order more of them.)

In an online space, which has effectively unlimited space, where adding new material costs nothing, and where the process of organizing that material and making it available is fully automated and what labor is involved is taken on by the contributing author, literally none of those constraints apply, so more content is more content! It’s catalogued and labeled as soon as it’s posted! It cannot be misshelved. Perfect!

2) This is not to say that no physical library has handwritten erotica in its collection somewhere. Many, many libraries collect rare local works such as self-published zines, and unique items like the personal papers of notable people (San Jose State University, for instance, holds the papers of the Kensington Ladies’ Erotica Society; The University of Iowa Zine Collection includes fanfic zines with erotic content; UCLA has the personal papers of Anais Nin), and doubtless some of these zines and personal papers include erotica. Because this handwritten material would be unique and its value would be presumed to lie mainly in the fact of its authorship, it would be properly collected, not in a library, but in an archive or special collection, where some archivist would dutifully folder it and make a note of what it was so future visitors to the collection could readily access it. 

The main goal there would be to protect the material, not the person who might potentially view the material.

I worked in a public library which had an extensive collection of Playboy on microfilm, for instance. We kept it behind a desk where it had to be requested and checked out with a library card before it could be viewed. This was partly to prevent children viewing material inappropriate for their age–just as, say, the AO3 clearly marks adult material as such–but mainly to prevent vandalism of the material by people who disapproved of it. Several of the images on the film had been damaged by people trying to scratch them out; for the safety of the microfilm, we restricted access to it. This is also why the AO3 doesn’t allow people who dislike a fic to force it to be taken down.

This is also why most libraries celebrate Banned Books Week by eagerly higlighting works which people have ATTEMPTED to force to be removed from libraries–including work like Lolita, which is read by many as a titillating pedophile love affair. Librarians are not celebrating Lolita. They are celebrating the principle that they will not be stopped from collecting materials of interest and making them available to readers.

3) From your description of a library where children can freely access anything on the shelves, you seem to have only one conception of a library–a public library with open stacks, or perhaps a school library. There are, in fact, many kinds of libraries, with academic libraries being the most obvious foil to your description. 

In an academic or university library, all authorized users of the library are adults who take adult responsibility for what they find in the library, much like when adult internet users indicate on a website that they are choosing to view adult content. 

When I worked in a university library, I asked one of the librarians what do when a guy was sitting at a computer very obviously watching porn while a young woman, sitting next to him doing something text-based, seemed like she might be uncomfortable. I was told in no uncertain terms that the library’s policy was to relocate the person who was uncomfortable. The library was a repository of information and a place to access information: any kind of information, including the erotic. Under no circumstances would we curtail a library user’s access to that information. 

(Unless he got his own actual dick out where people could see it, then we could call the campus police. Because, again: actual humans directly involved.)

4) I just want you to know that these exist:

Harvard Film Archive Collection: Erotica

Outfest UCLA Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation

Kiney Institute Collections at Indiana University

Duke University Library Erotica Collection, 1940s-1960s (”An archive of original illustrations, sketchbooks, and erotic stories, depicting transgressive sex acts including (but not limited to) lesbian and heterosexual sex, incest, pedophilia, sadomassochistic behavior, and copulation with objects as varied as sex toys, produce, and household appliances. The stories and illustrations appear to be the work of a single individual, with nearly all narrative told from a female’s point of view. Also includes some amateur pornographic photography and magazine clippings.”)