Here's a scary story that presents a great library problem as well. In the Music Library here at UNC-CH, our Listening Room is just one room with tables holding CD players, record players, tape players and videodisc and videocassette machines; there are no private carrels or anything like that. We often have patrons come in with their own personal CDs and ask if it's okay to listen to them in the library. We have no problem with this.

Last summer, a regular patron, about an 80 year old man, came in with a videocassette and asked if he could watch it. Thank goodness, I was at lunch. My colleague said sure, no problem. One of our staff members even helped the guy get the cassette started, since he didn't know how to use a VCR. Well, soon after, a student came out of the listening room laughing and reported that the little old man was watching a pornographic video. My colleague who was in charge at the time had to ask the man not to watch the video here in the library, since its contents might offend some people. The little old guy was very nice about it, although he seemed somewhat surprised. And someone had to help him get the cassette out of the machine.

We have gotten a lot of mileage out of that story, but it did cause us to re-consider our policy of letting anything hear or watch personal items in our Listening Room. It has to not be offensive to other patrons. So now we are the morals-police. Great. Fortunately, this situation has not come up again!