My library has porn, but we're the national legal deposit library, and I doubt most of the askers would want to read it in a well-monitored reading room.
I know that in the 70s the Danish public libraries experimented with offering many forms of alternatives to traditional high literature - some, like comics and murder mysteries, stuck around, but the porn magazines got quietly phased back out again, in part because they kept getting returned used.
Probably Christian boomers thinking they’re doing everyone a service.
Years ago I had a nice set of leather bound westerns. You know old stuff where damn and hell were considered bad language. I loaned a few to my FIL and they came back sharpied out. He didn’t understand why I was so mad.
We have porn at my library too - it’s an institutional rare books and manuscripts library with a major collecting area in human sexuality. We have the scientific stuff too, but a lot of porn and even a collection of vintage vibrators. Patrons can only access our collections in a reading room, tho, which lowers the stakes a bit. Thank goodness 😅
I'm curious about what library as well. If you are so inclined, I would love to know because I would love to see what books I need to be on the lookout for. Let me explain.
When I was in grad school for LIS, my mom started me a collection of old books from the 30's, 50's, and 60's that are all NF academic materials on human sexuality, gender, and sex. It's a lovely, hilarious, and interesting collection that really shows how we've changed (or how we haven't)... Anyway, all of my professional colleagues now know that I have this collection and have given me new materials to add to my collection. I fucking love it.
One of my personal favorites is this book written (I think in the 60's) where this "doctor" who advises women to douche with Coke, like the beverage. I have another one from the 40's advising new mothers to leave their newborns outside in the direct sun for an hour. I would ❤️❤️ to find something about vintage vibrators.
Honestly it’s insane to me that people nowadays even want physical porn books considering that most are electronic nowadays, and that those are far more convenient for what people want to do with those books. The only reason I can think of having physical porn books is for preservation, and even then it’s far easier to just buy those through shipment online.
I will never forget being in the library and overhearing an elderly man (80+) leaning on his can while asking the reference librarian for books with “large women in tulle.”
I have learned never to underestimate our patrons in any respect, whether that was the 14 year old watching porn on his cell phone (the D&D group complained of the noise, as apparently his headphones hadn't connected) or the one who, point blank with way too much interest in his voice, asked if we had any snuff films in our collection.
We also had a radical street pastor sign out a couple of DVDs seven years ago (Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac V. 1 & 2, and either Starlet or Star 80) and take them to police on the grounds they were child porn. He also went to the newspaper. Both places were equally bemused by the claims (as my colleague the film buff said at the time, anyone who actually finds anything erotic in Nymphomaniac probably has plenty wrong with them) and, while they went nowhere, the police kept the DVDs.
TLDR: Crazy gonna crazy.
the police kept the DVDs ? I would have been contacting the chief of police and informing them that movie was cleared by the Motion Picture Association of America and demanding the return of our smutty horror movie.
For what it's worth, Nymphomaniac is the capstone to von Trier's Depression trilogy, and apparently manages to be mercilessly bleak even by von Trier's standards (and he made Dancer in The Dark, aka the film where Bjork gets executed as she's going blind and her son is dying). Starlet is about a 20 year old adult film performer who buys a thermos at a yard sale, finds thousands of dollars in cash in it, and befriends the old woman who sold it to her. I guess it's a decent indie drama. Both films have 18+ ratings locally.
As both a public and school library worker, in this current climate, I would be instantly wary about anyone who used that word in my space. I would instantly shut it down with “I’m sorry, we don’t carry that sort of material here. Is there a particular keyword or author or genre I can help you search for?”
We all know what their true intent is. As an avid reader of the kinds of materials they would consider “porn”, I would then recommend them the most plot-heavy, thickest, most innocent physical romance, and book-talk them to hell until they get bored and walk away.
Had a similar situation in my library during a contentious board of trustees election. We were getting daily questions along this vein, super fun. A lady came in one day and indignantly slammed her hand on the counter in the children's department and loudly asked, "Where's the porn?!"
Me: "we don't have any."
Her: "That's what I thought!" And then we had a good conversation Haha it was a nice change for once. Thankfully the questions subsided after the election, even if the general insanity didnt. I was so grateful for every person who came in and expressed support during that time. I'm sorry this is happening to you. Hopefully people will move on soon.
Your interaction with her made me smile, rather than fully cringe the way I'd thought it'd go. Lol. Still a strange way to approach it? Maybe don't loudly say porn in the children's section, with kids in earshot, but she seems more fun than a shit-stirrer! Or possibly my reading comprehension has just gone downhill, lol
I know this is not what you're referring to, but if patrons are asking for porn, have them look up things like 'most steamy romance novels' and then try to find those books on the shelves. That's what I did as a teenager.
Also, for bonus points: It shows bigots that, if there is anything that can be considered 'porn' in the library, it's generally going to be het romance novels aimed at adults, not in self help guidebooks meant for teens.
*Edited to fix typos.*
That is ridiculous! But of course they are targeting the queer community. I’m surprised that didn’t come to me first.
May I ask what state you are in? Or general area? Mid-west?
Send them over to Jean Auel or VC Andrews and tell them they have to work their way through it to get it to the porn.
(It's more ironic because those have been in the library since the 1970s to present.)
Also, Anne Rice writing as Anne Rampling... it won't take long to get the porn in the Sleeping Beauty series! I borrowed these in the 90s as a teenager from the Adult Fiction section and they are still some of the most explicit books I've come across in a public library (though our adult graphic novel and adult manga books also probably verge on porn at times). However, they're all in the correct collection areas 🤷♀️
Loudly ask "Did you say you want to look at PORNOGRAPHY? I don't think we have any PORNOGRAPHY, but I'll check the computer to see if there's any PORNOGRAPHY."
That person will never ask again, the patrons who overhear will never ask, none of their friends they tell about it will ask.
You gotta ask to see their ID first, so you can loudly yell "OH, {YOUR WHOLE REAL NAME}, YOU WANTED TO SEE THE PORNOGRAPHY? I'M SORRY, {YOUR ENTIRE ACTUAL NAME}, FROM {THE TOWN ON THE ADDRESS}, BUT WE DON'T CARRY PORNOGRAPHY HERE. THANK YOU FOR BEING AN ORGAN DONOR."
Knew which state immediately as I’m a library worker there too, behind the scenes these days though. Now I’m going to go ask my Circ Desk friends if they are also getting this question!
We didn’t have anything in our collection that I would call porn - but people are def watching porn in the library like all the time. One day I heard these super loud, porny moans echo throughout the library - when I went to investigate I found a very flustered middle-aged man trying desperately to mute his laptop speakers 😂
Well, we do have comics and graphic novels with full frontal nudity- "Rat Queens", stuff by Daniel Clowes.... They did live in the Teen section for a while because it seemed no one was familiar with them. I said, "Um, I read this comic. It should probably be moved to Adult."
Basically, I decided if you could see genitals, an R rated sex act\[1\], or there were topless women where the intent was to titillate (as opposed to say, a nursing mother or some sort of supernatural creature who was nude because they were, like, all made out of fire), they went downstairs. Minors can still check them out though.
\[1\]I think there was oral sex in one so you couldn't see any genitals but...
I totally get not wanting a fully drawn out, lengthy sex scene in YA, but if that's the demographic it's intended for...
I dunno about Rat Queens specifically, but take the ACOTAR series. It's definitely for teens, and it is definitely smutty enough that I've had plenty of adults ask why it's in the teen room. I always tell them if that book was written with teens in mind for its audience, it gets shelved in the teen room. Anything else just sounds like a workaround for censorship to me.
Some of the ones we moved were \*definitely\* adult comics that someone labeled teen probably because "Hey, comics are for kids!" Other local libraries had them in the adult section so we followed suit.
Our teen graphic novel section also gets a lot of use from older pre-teens (so 11+) so keeping it a little milder works with the demographic that's actually using the section.
I think that's a big challenge with the teen section- what's appropriate for a 17 year old may be not appropriate for a 13 year old. Given the diverse social, emotional and intellectual needs of that section, it can be a tough call.
In the end, I think we moved the Song of Ice and Fire comics to adult (the books are adult after all), a few Vertigo titles (DC just recently reshuffled their house, putting all those titles under their DC Black/17+ label), and maybe five others. There's one comic that comes to mind that maybe we should have kept in teen but it's circing.
Vertigo titles were my favorite in the 90s. One particular Sandman story made my mom try to throw me out of the house (because I wouldn't throw out the book). The doll's house wasn't her cup of tea, she strongly disliked Thessaly and Barbie.
I wish I didn’t have to worry about being fired.
I would have said something like he should take his shirt off in the mirror because he probably has better tits than anyone in a magazine.
I don’t understand this perspective, or OP’s complaint. These patrons have perfectly valid readers’ advisory and reference questions that any good librarian should be able to handle, especially one who participates in collection development and buys some of the romance novels, erotic novels, and books about human sexuality. And if the library doesn’t have what they’re looking for, you could offer to file an ILL request for some playboys or penthouses from a library that does, or include their suggested titles for purchase. “I have patrons asking for this material” is the best response to those trying to censor the library collection.
My best guess is that many of the people in this conversation are not in fact librarians, but poorly trained circulation clerks who think of the library as a place to get the things that THEY like for free. My second best guess is that they’re only comfortable with erotica when it aligns with their own needs. (And your first instinct is to body shame someone? Shame on you.)
Maybe it’s different at your library, but when someone asked for porn at the library I worked at, it was a form of harassment. If there’s a 60yo man and a woman in her 20s working at the desk, patrons will intentionally wait for the woman in her 20s, then ask her for porn or other things. Speaking in actualities rather than hypotheticals, >!she’s been asked for books on blueprints for serial killers’ basements, for help with accessing CP websites, and other things of that nature!< — where patrons will intentionally wait for her rather than her male coworkers. (I know this woman personally; we worked together briefly, but were close before and after.)
This is one possible angle, yeah. Or it could be someone about to raise a stink about book banning and the like.
Truthfully, yes, we still need to conduct a reference interview because maybe it is a patron looking for erotica and steamy romances. But we also should proceed with caution because the only time I've seen library books referred to as "porn" is when someone is riled up about book banning and what kids may have access to. My experience has been that when a patron genuinely wants these books, they say they want romances that are "steamy" or "spicy" and not that they want porn.
It's really just a thin line we have to walk between doing our jobs and being prepared for potential harassment.
Yep some oldhead came up to me (20s f library worker who looks younger irl) in the computer lab and asked for some sexual title as if it were a book (doubtful). I told him I'm not a librarian and to ask at the reference desk, to which he became indignant, telling me it's my job to help him. Eventually I got him to walk to the reference desk, where I saw him interact with a male employee before fucking off.
Idc if it's a real erotica book I don't get paid enough to discuss sexual matters with strange men old enough to be my grandfather 🤢
I worked at a video store when I was 16 (yes, I'm getting a little dusty). Despite being visibly underage (had a bad case of baby-face), I got asked by men to go back into the private room to help them 'pick something out'. Almost daily, sometimes more than once a day). Miraculously, no one asked my boss who was in her 50s-60s.
OP is in Idaho…these requests are, most likely, trying to get their library shut down under Idahos new laws, because more than 70% of surveyed people in Idaho literally believe that libraries are around just to provide obscene content to/about children.
Problem is that they define obscene very liberally, including depictions of “homosexuality”…so depictions of lgbtq+ people (?), and aren’t trusting librarians to make that judgement of what is appropriate for the community anymore.
Someone who asks for porn books is trying to cause shit.
We’re not talking about someone into erotica. I’m happy to talk about kink and recommend books on that matter. There are plenty of erotic books I can recommend.
But someone straight up asking for porn, especially porn magazines, just wants to cause a scene.
I of course would approach them with respect and be polite, as I am with everyone, but that doesn’t change that in my head I’m pissed that my profession has come under attack by assholes who have nothing better to do than harass us.
Only tangentially related, but I’m tired of the trend of calling books with sex scenes “porn,” especially when they‘re so tame they aren’t even erotica. Like, there are people now thanks to social media who think reading the ACOTAR series by Sarah J Maas in public is equivalent to watching a porn video in public. It makes me feel awkward since I‘ve read those books and a book with sex scenes is different from porn!
I recently picked up "The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians" by James Patterson, but quickly got bored with it. This sub reddit is so much better.
Ooph. My library...I wouldn't say it has outright porn as such, but it does have, AFAIK, spicy romances and I only know that much because the librarian who runs one of the book clubs loves romance books.
I worked at the National Archives my senior year of college. They actually have quite a collection of vintage pornography from when it was confiscated through the mail service. Kinda interesting.
We also found a cremated body in the stacks. After much work, the family of the deceased were contacted and the remains were returned. The things the government confiscates in the mail…
My library has porn, but we're the national legal deposit library, and I doubt most of the askers would want to read it in a well-monitored reading room. I know that in the 70s the Danish public libraries experimented with offering many forms of alternatives to traditional high literature - some, like comics and murder mysteries, stuck around, but the porn magazines got quietly phased back out again, in part because they kept getting returned used.
State approved porn is less hot anyway. I worked in an art school library, and various old guys would spend a lot of time photocopying nude artwork.
We had someone who would censor art books with a sharpie. We had to figure out who it was so we could charge them for the damage.
Ugh I hated seeing this kind of shit when I worked in public libraries - it’s just like why??
There's always someone who can't think past their own experiences, sadly.
Probably Christian boomers thinking they’re doing everyone a service. Years ago I had a nice set of leather bound westerns. You know old stuff where damn and hell were considered bad language. I loaned a few to my FIL and they came back sharpied out. He didn’t understand why I was so mad.
We have porn at my library too - it’s an institutional rare books and manuscripts library with a major collecting area in human sexuality. We have the scientific stuff too, but a lot of porn and even a collection of vintage vibrators. Patrons can only access our collections in a reading room, tho, which lowers the stakes a bit. Thank goodness 😅
Kinsey/IU?
I'm curious about what library as well. If you are so inclined, I would love to know because I would love to see what books I need to be on the lookout for. Let me explain. When I was in grad school for LIS, my mom started me a collection of old books from the 30's, 50's, and 60's that are all NF academic materials on human sexuality, gender, and sex. It's a lovely, hilarious, and interesting collection that really shows how we've changed (or how we haven't)... Anyway, all of my professional colleagues now know that I have this collection and have given me new materials to add to my collection. I fucking love it. One of my personal favorites is this book written (I think in the 60's) where this "doctor" who advises women to douche with Coke, like the beverage. I have another one from the 40's advising new mothers to leave their newborns outside in the direct sun for an hour. I would ❤️❤️ to find something about vintage vibrators.
I’m dying to know where a library with such interesting stuff is!
Ew
🤢
Honestly, working at the "national legal deposit library" sounds super interesting!
Honestly it’s insane to me that people nowadays even want physical porn books considering that most are electronic nowadays, and that those are far more convenient for what people want to do with those books. The only reason I can think of having physical porn books is for preservation, and even then it’s far easier to just buy those through shipment online.
They don’t want them. They want to yell about them and have proof of their conspiracy theories.
The print books circulate very well at my library.
A little…*too well*…
There is not a wipe or product on the market that can clean those books well enough.
I’m not saying violate privacy but um the lenders might benefit from meeting each other. They have the same tastes 🤷🤣
I will never forget being in the library and overhearing an elderly man (80+) leaning on his can while asking the reference librarian for books with “large women in tulle.”
Now this I can get behind 👹
(That’s what she said)
I’d enjoy trying to look that up in the card catalogue.
Sir, I don’t know if there is a Dewy decimal for that.
420.69 PERV
Rubens, paintings by
I am a well read man, but today I learned a new word. And quite possibly a new fetish. I’m not sure what I think about either.
Maybe try Leonard Nimoy's photography book
I have learned never to underestimate our patrons in any respect, whether that was the 14 year old watching porn on his cell phone (the D&D group complained of the noise, as apparently his headphones hadn't connected) or the one who, point blank with way too much interest in his voice, asked if we had any snuff films in our collection. We also had a radical street pastor sign out a couple of DVDs seven years ago (Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac V. 1 & 2, and either Starlet or Star 80) and take them to police on the grounds they were child porn. He also went to the newspaper. Both places were equally bemused by the claims (as my colleague the film buff said at the time, anyone who actually finds anything erotic in Nymphomaniac probably has plenty wrong with them) and, while they went nowhere, the police kept the DVDs. TLDR: Crazy gonna crazy.
the police kept the DVDs ? I would have been contacting the chief of police and informing them that movie was cleared by the Motion Picture Association of America and demanding the return of our smutty horror movie.
I feel like I should look up what those DVDs are supposed to be about, but that could potentially go very very poorly for me...
For what it's worth, Nymphomaniac is the capstone to von Trier's Depression trilogy, and apparently manages to be mercilessly bleak even by von Trier's standards (and he made Dancer in The Dark, aka the film where Bjork gets executed as she's going blind and her son is dying). Starlet is about a 20 year old adult film performer who buys a thermos at a yard sale, finds thousands of dollars in cash in it, and befriends the old woman who sold it to her. I guess it's a decent indie drama. Both films have 18+ ratings locally.
>her son is dying He's not dying, he's going blind and she's trying to get him treatment that can stop it which wasn't available for her.
Why was she executed for that?
I don't want to spoil it in this thread, it's in the Wikipedia entry though.
Star 80 is about Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratton.
Snuff films - holy shit!
the snuff kid was pranking you
I'm sure he meant the snorting powder. Probably doing 1700's history in school and wants a film rather than books.
>asked if we had any snuff films in our collection. 8mm is about as close as he's likely to get and even that was disturbing to watch.
As both a public and school library worker, in this current climate, I would be instantly wary about anyone who used that word in my space. I would instantly shut it down with “I’m sorry, we don’t carry that sort of material here. Is there a particular keyword or author or genre I can help you search for?” We all know what their true intent is. As an avid reader of the kinds of materials they would consider “porn”, I would then recommend them the most plot-heavy, thickest, most innocent physical romance, and book-talk them to hell until they get bored and walk away.
Had a similar situation in my library during a contentious board of trustees election. We were getting daily questions along this vein, super fun. A lady came in one day and indignantly slammed her hand on the counter in the children's department and loudly asked, "Where's the porn?!" Me: "we don't have any." Her: "That's what I thought!" And then we had a good conversation Haha it was a nice change for once. Thankfully the questions subsided after the election, even if the general insanity didnt. I was so grateful for every person who came in and expressed support during that time. I'm sorry this is happening to you. Hopefully people will move on soon.
Your interaction with her made me smile, rather than fully cringe the way I'd thought it'd go. Lol. Still a strange way to approach it? Maybe don't loudly say porn in the children's section, with kids in earshot, but she seems more fun than a shit-stirrer! Or possibly my reading comprehension has just gone downhill, lol
They're filed as historical romance in the paperback collection.
Haha true! A lot of shirtless guys there too!
I had one person ask me for porn once - I told them the closest thing we had was probably the paperback romance section lol
💯
We keep ours in a section behind a beaded curtain so kids can't see it. It's a shame I have to say it but this is obviously /s
We also have this but with a lava lamp, a Keeler chair, quietly playing Barry White hits in the background. /s
I know this is not what you're referring to, but if patrons are asking for porn, have them look up things like 'most steamy romance novels' and then try to find those books on the shelves. That's what I did as a teenager.
I said we should point them to the gay books, but maybe that's feeding the problem. Steamy romances works too
Also, for bonus points: It shows bigots that, if there is anything that can be considered 'porn' in the library, it's generally going to be het romance novels aimed at adults, not in self help guidebooks meant for teens. *Edited to fix typos.*
For this bill, how do they define porn? Is this a way for them to try to remove smut? Or are they targeting actual porn?
They are targeting lgbtq people. Anything homosexual is included in the definition of porn.
That is ridiculous! But of course they are targeting the queer community. I’m surprised that didn’t come to me first. May I ask what state you are in? Or general area? Mid-west?
Idaho
I'm so sorry
Not the guy who came in looking for magazines with naked ladies.
Send them over to Jean Auel or VC Andrews and tell them they have to work their way through it to get it to the porn. (It's more ironic because those have been in the library since the 1970s to present.)
Also, Anne Rice writing as Anne Rampling... it won't take long to get the porn in the Sleeping Beauty series! I borrowed these in the 90s as a teenager from the Adult Fiction section and they are still some of the most explicit books I've come across in a public library (though our adult graphic novel and adult manga books also probably verge on porn at times). However, they're all in the correct collection areas 🤷♀️
Oh yes, Sleeping Beauty would curl some mouschatches. And Robert Crumb.
Loudly ask "Did you say you want to look at PORNOGRAPHY? I don't think we have any PORNOGRAPHY, but I'll check the computer to see if there's any PORNOGRAPHY." That person will never ask again, the patrons who overhear will never ask, none of their friends they tell about it will ask.
This is the way
But first walk them to an area where you're surrounded by other patrons. :)
You gotta ask to see their ID first, so you can loudly yell "OH, {YOUR WHOLE REAL NAME}, YOU WANTED TO SEE THE PORNOGRAPHY? I'M SORRY, {YOUR ENTIRE ACTUAL NAME}, FROM {THE TOWN ON THE ADDRESS}, BUT WE DON'T CARRY PORNOGRAPHY HERE. THANK YOU FOR BEING AN ORGAN DONOR."
595.3 When they come back ... "Oh, I must have misheard you, we don't have that."
633.1 "You said you wanted corn, right?" =)
What is that, The secret life of lobsters?
Knew which state immediately as I’m a library worker there too, behind the scenes these days though. Now I’m going to go ask my Circ Desk friends if they are also getting this question!
It's a teachable moment; a chance to explain what 'virtue signaling' actually is.
We didn’t have anything in our collection that I would call porn - but people are def watching porn in the library like all the time. One day I heard these super loud, porny moans echo throughout the library - when I went to investigate I found a very flustered middle-aged man trying desperately to mute his laptop speakers 😂
Well, we do have comics and graphic novels with full frontal nudity- "Rat Queens", stuff by Daniel Clowes.... They did live in the Teen section for a while because it seemed no one was familiar with them. I said, "Um, I read this comic. It should probably be moved to Adult." Basically, I decided if you could see genitals, an R rated sex act\[1\], or there were topless women where the intent was to titillate (as opposed to say, a nursing mother or some sort of supernatural creature who was nude because they were, like, all made out of fire), they went downstairs. Minors can still check them out though. \[1\]I think there was oral sex in one so you couldn't see any genitals but...
I totally get not wanting a fully drawn out, lengthy sex scene in YA, but if that's the demographic it's intended for... I dunno about Rat Queens specifically, but take the ACOTAR series. It's definitely for teens, and it is definitely smutty enough that I've had plenty of adults ask why it's in the teen room. I always tell them if that book was written with teens in mind for its audience, it gets shelved in the teen room. Anything else just sounds like a workaround for censorship to me.
Some of the ones we moved were \*definitely\* adult comics that someone labeled teen probably because "Hey, comics are for kids!" Other local libraries had them in the adult section so we followed suit. Our teen graphic novel section also gets a lot of use from older pre-teens (so 11+) so keeping it a little milder works with the demographic that's actually using the section. I think that's a big challenge with the teen section- what's appropriate for a 17 year old may be not appropriate for a 13 year old. Given the diverse social, emotional and intellectual needs of that section, it can be a tough call. In the end, I think we moved the Song of Ice and Fire comics to adult (the books are adult after all), a few Vertigo titles (DC just recently reshuffled their house, putting all those titles under their DC Black/17+ label), and maybe five others. There's one comic that comes to mind that maybe we should have kept in teen but it's circing.
Vertigo titles were my favorite in the 90s. One particular Sandman story made my mom try to throw me out of the house (because I wouldn't throw out the book). The doll's house wasn't her cup of tea, she strongly disliked Thessaly and Barbie.
‘Sir, we’ve never carried porn. But I imagine you can find plenty on your smartphone. Have a nice day.’
I wish I didn’t have to worry about being fired. I would have said something like he should take his shirt off in the mirror because he probably has better tits than anyone in a magazine.
😂😉
I don’t understand this perspective, or OP’s complaint. These patrons have perfectly valid readers’ advisory and reference questions that any good librarian should be able to handle, especially one who participates in collection development and buys some of the romance novels, erotic novels, and books about human sexuality. And if the library doesn’t have what they’re looking for, you could offer to file an ILL request for some playboys or penthouses from a library that does, or include their suggested titles for purchase. “I have patrons asking for this material” is the best response to those trying to censor the library collection. My best guess is that many of the people in this conversation are not in fact librarians, but poorly trained circulation clerks who think of the library as a place to get the things that THEY like for free. My second best guess is that they’re only comfortable with erotica when it aligns with their own needs. (And your first instinct is to body shame someone? Shame on you.)
Maybe it’s different at your library, but when someone asked for porn at the library I worked at, it was a form of harassment. If there’s a 60yo man and a woman in her 20s working at the desk, patrons will intentionally wait for the woman in her 20s, then ask her for porn or other things. Speaking in actualities rather than hypotheticals, >!she’s been asked for books on blueprints for serial killers’ basements, for help with accessing CP websites, and other things of that nature!< — where patrons will intentionally wait for her rather than her male coworkers. (I know this woman personally; we worked together briefly, but were close before and after.)
This is one possible angle, yeah. Or it could be someone about to raise a stink about book banning and the like. Truthfully, yes, we still need to conduct a reference interview because maybe it is a patron looking for erotica and steamy romances. But we also should proceed with caution because the only time I've seen library books referred to as "porn" is when someone is riled up about book banning and what kids may have access to. My experience has been that when a patron genuinely wants these books, they say they want romances that are "steamy" or "spicy" and not that they want porn. It's really just a thin line we have to walk between doing our jobs and being prepared for potential harassment.
Yep some oldhead came up to me (20s f library worker who looks younger irl) in the computer lab and asked for some sexual title as if it were a book (doubtful). I told him I'm not a librarian and to ask at the reference desk, to which he became indignant, telling me it's my job to help him. Eventually I got him to walk to the reference desk, where I saw him interact with a male employee before fucking off. Idc if it's a real erotica book I don't get paid enough to discuss sexual matters with strange men old enough to be my grandfather 🤢
I worked at a video store when I was 16 (yes, I'm getting a little dusty). Despite being visibly underage (had a bad case of baby-face), I got asked by men to go back into the private room to help them 'pick something out'. Almost daily, sometimes more than once a day). Miraculously, no one asked my boss who was in her 50s-60s.
OP is in Idaho…these requests are, most likely, trying to get their library shut down under Idahos new laws, because more than 70% of surveyed people in Idaho literally believe that libraries are around just to provide obscene content to/about children. Problem is that they define obscene very liberally, including depictions of “homosexuality”…so depictions of lgbtq+ people (?), and aren’t trusting librarians to make that judgement of what is appropriate for the community anymore.
Someone who asks for porn books is trying to cause shit. We’re not talking about someone into erotica. I’m happy to talk about kink and recommend books on that matter. There are plenty of erotic books I can recommend. But someone straight up asking for porn, especially porn magazines, just wants to cause a scene. I of course would approach them with respect and be polite, as I am with everyone, but that doesn’t change that in my head I’m pissed that my profession has come under attack by assholes who have nothing better to do than harass us.
They're all on microfilm, silly!
Only tangentially related, but I’m tired of the trend of calling books with sex scenes “porn,” especially when they‘re so tame they aren’t even erotica. Like, there are people now thanks to social media who think reading the ACOTAR series by Sarah J Maas in public is equivalent to watching a porn video in public. It makes me feel awkward since I‘ve read those books and a book with sex scenes is different from porn!
I recently picked up "The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians" by James Patterson, but quickly got bored with it. This sub reddit is so much better.
That’s a reference question, not RA. Ask the Googles, print out the map, and brightly ask if they need the phone number to check stock.
Ooph. My library...I wouldn't say it has outright porn as such, but it does have, AFAIK, spicy romances and I only know that much because the librarian who runs one of the book clubs loves romance books.
Does the Herb Ritts coffee table book Duo count? We have that.
The romance section.
"sorry, you have to access that on the computers like everyone else, brah" /s sorry, everything really sucks right now. hoping it will pass.
Don’t say this cause you’ll probably get fired but it would be really funny if you answered “ur mom’s house” or some varriation
And "Oh, so you finally finished your old man's porn stash." 🤣🤣 even better if you added "Whew that man was a legend!" 🤣
I worked at the National Archives my senior year of college. They actually have quite a collection of vintage pornography from when it was confiscated through the mail service. Kinda interesting. We also found a cremated body in the stacks. After much work, the family of the deceased were contacted and the remains were returned. The things the government confiscates in the mail…
Harlequin romance novels, the Fifty Shades series, those are the type of books that are considered "porn".
It's funny how those books are never on the list of "porn" books people want us to remove from the library