What's The Point?

Dearest Blog,
I have gotten out of my system the frustrations and anger in regards to the recent changes at the UGL. I don’t want every blog entry from here on out that I write to drip with disdain. I also don’t want to ignore things that make little to no sense here at the Undergraduate Library. Perhaps every library has policies or procedures they follow if a tornado were to hit their building. Or if a group or high school students are repeatedly being disruptive and causing a disturbance in the library. My favorite policy or procedure at the moment is how to handle pornography.

Pornography isn’t always an issue that comes up at the UGL. I’ve only had a few encounters where it was discussed. Once a male patron came to the Information Desk to inform me that a man near him was watching porn. While he didn’t appear to be offended by what the man was watching, he wanted to alert staff. Thank you sir, I replied without being quite sure on how to handle this matter.

Up until that point, a couple of librarians told me that they were unaware of any policy that existed to prohibit patrons from watching porn at the UGL. Of course, if patrons were watching child pornography this had to be addressed and if it wasn’t child porn, the “porn watcher” was well within his/her rights.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, after the implementation of the Combined Service Desk. As I sat in the GSA lounge one afternoon, I noticed a row of files dedicated to different policies/procedures at the UGL. In a matter of minutes, I was flipping through the files when I noticed a policy/procedure dedicated to the issue of pornography. Immediately, I took out the sheet of paper and devoured every word from top to bottom.

To my surprise, there really isn’t a whole lot you can do if someone is actually watching porn at the UGL. If a patron comes to make a complaint about it because he/she is offended, the staff person holds the right to confront the accused person. The staff can ask the person viewing porn to move to a less visible computer, but the patron holds the right to refuse to move. Should he/she refuse to move, the employee can suggest to the person making the complaint to move to another area of the library.

Final Thoughts: The fact that I just so happen to find this particular policy/procedure along with others in the GSA lounge indicates the ineffectiveness of communication within the UGL. I’ve been working here for well over 6 months and am just learning the policy/procedure for handling pornography. Here in lies my questions, what’s the point of creating various policies/procedures if they’re just going to be tucked away in a drawer never to be openly shared and/or discussed amongst staff? Who is benefitting from having topics of this nature stored away in a drawer?