Oregon: Beaverton City Library Reconsiders How to Respond to Pornography, Public Masturbation Cases

From The Oregonian:

Over the last year, the library had five incidents related to pornography or public masturbation. Of those, only [Giovanni] Maipi was arrested and banned from returning to the library for 30 days.
What gets someone booted from the library, and for how long, varies depending on the opinion of whatever library staffer happens to be available.
“It’s somewhat ad hoc,” said Ed House, the library director.
House, however, said he is working with the City Attorney’s office on standard guidelines for disciplining unruly behavior. “We want to get that formalized,” House said.
Library staff can’t always track who’s doing what on a computer, though they regularly patrol the grounds, House said. Roughly 2,800 people on average visit the main library and Murray Scholls branches each day.
Staffers frequently deal with lesser offenses, such as a patron borrowing a friend’s library card to stay past the hour-long limit on a computer, according to the library’s internal incident reports. Staying past the limit, loud outbursts of profanity and disturbance of other patrons all could get someone kicked out.

Read the Complete Article

Filed under: Libraries, Patrons and Users, Reports