Fergie's Tech Blog

Florida Librarian Suspended over Porn Incident

Thanks to a post over on Slashdot which pointed out this article.

A brief snippet on the American Library Association (ALA) website reports that:

The director of the Valparaiso (Fla.) Community Library was suspended without pay in early August after city officials found that a registered sex offender had used library computers to access pornographic websites.

City Commissioner Robert Billingsley said in the August 12 Gainesville Sun that he would ask the commission to fire VCL Director Sue Martin, but he declined to explain why he thought she had not done enough to prevent the incident, which occurred July 25. Police charged Michael Bushee, 25, with possession of child pornography several days later. Billingsley said police also told him that three male minors had used the VCL computers to look at sites with adult content.

The Sun quoted a letter Martin had written to Billingsley in which she explained, “We continually enforce our policy by monitoring all computers. Any suspicious use is immediately checked by accessing the history of the patrons’ Web use. In addition, the staff monitors the patrons’ use by ‘walkthroughs’ of the computer areas.”

City Attorney Doug Wyckoff said Martin would receive a hearing within 60 days.

posted by Fergie @ 8/13/2005 10:03:00 AM