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A challenge to the unrestricted status of the internationally acclaimed
Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita in the Marion County (Fla.)
Public Library System has prompted the county commission to ask Marion
County Attorney Gordon Johnston whether the book meets the state
definition of “unsuitable for minors.” Commissioners made the request
January 19 after voting 3–2 to back MCPLS Director Julie Sieg’s
decision that the novel, whose theme is sexual obsession focusing on an
adolescent girl, is appropriately shelved in the open-access adult
section.
The appeal to Johnston is a test of the library’s
six-month-old reconsideration
policy, which mandates the establishment of an adults-only area for
materials judged to be harmful to minors. Complainant Terry Blaes, a
one-time member of the library’s advisory board, which was disbanded
last spring by the county commission, lamented in the January 20 Ocala
Star-Banner that commissioners “dodged the issue of whether a book
that they might consider unsuitable for minors ought to be removed from
the adult section of the library” by deferring to Johnston’s legal
expertise. The reconsideration policy only authorizes the commission to
determine whether a library item was acquired and shelved
appropriately, not whether it is harmful to minors.
“The policy is flawed as it is written,” Johnston told the Star-Banner,
adding that if Blaes and Eddie MacCausland, another former advisory
board member who challenged Lolita, “wanted something done,
what they should do is request that the board change the policy.”
Posted January 27, 2006.
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