EDITORIAL: Under lock and key

Answer: Criminals, hard liquor, guns and books.

Question: What should be locked up for the protection of children?

Thanks to the Idaho Legislature and potentially, to Community Library Network trustees, the answer is books.

And yet, according to the local library network’s board majority, literally locking up books deemed inappropriate for readers under 18 could become the rule.

This Thursday, trustees might decide how to implement the Legislature’s new laws, Idaho statutes 18-1513 through 18-1517B, attempting to put certain reading materials out of minors’ reach.

But the new laws don’t paddle across prurient ponds quite as specifically when it comes to telling library trustees how to separate malleable young minds from sinful words and images. Never fear: CLN trustees are here.

According to an Aug. 8 draft policy created by Trustee Tim Plass, all CLN patrons should be issued new library cards, with only those holding Adult Open Access cards being granted entry into the locked “smut room,” as Trustee Tom Hanley called it.

The adult will have to request a key at the front desk that unlocks the gate to the Prurient Palace but only after printing and signing their name and time of transgression on a log-in sheet that also requires the designated employee number of the library staffer complicit in the transaction.

The proposal calls for video surveillance and recording of all who enter the Forbidden-Fruit Room. And for good measure, the draft policy says, “All such harmful materials in a CLN library, whether written or marketed toward minors or adults, shall be located in the library’s Adult Access Only Restricted Area.”

In other words, cleansing the kids’ shelves isn’t enough. If, in trustees’ eyes, any materials in the big people sections don’t pass the obscenity test, they’ll be rounded up and incarcerated in the Smut Cell, too. 

All of this means that if the draft policy is adopted, staff should probably prepare for keeping the main library under lock and key but graciously allowing patrons complete access to the foyer — with reduced hours for patrons and fewer staff to monitor the mayhem, of course. 

And none of this will just make those malleable young minds more curious, right?

Right?