BUT SMART ADULTS CAN MAKE CHOICES ABOUT WHAT THEIR CHILDREN DO OR DON'T DO (CON: WHERE'S MRS. BERRYMAN WHEN YOU NEED HER?)

When Mrs. Berryman ran the public library in my favorite hometown in the Ozarks, there was no confusion about who was in charge. Of course, that was in the dark ages before computers. Sputnik hadn't even been launched. You want to know how dark the ages were? There was no TV in Kelo Valley, where I grew up on a farm.

Thank goodness I was a reader when I was young. I remain convinced that avid readers are better informed about the world around them and, as youngsters, are better students than their peers who watch MTV and play Pokemon. (In my day, it was jukeboxes and pool, but you get the idea.) I could also make a good case that avid readers are handsomer and prettier too, but that's another topic.

I am intrigued by the current debate over Internet access in public libraries. Ken Paulson of the Freedom Forum makes a compelling argument against limiting such access, and I certainly agree wholeheartedly with his conclusion that the best filters around are Mom and Dad. But I am concerned that smart, well-educated and likable adults seem to want to treat the Internet like an untouchable medium removed from the commonsense world that includes books, newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, videos, parchments, scrolls, park-bench whittling, love letters and secret notes passed from one fifth grader to another during history class at school.

By the time I was 12 or 13 years old, I had read every book literally in the juvenile section of my hometown public library. When I selected half a dozen books of adult fiction and took them to Mrs. Berryman to check out, I quickly learned lessons about community standards, authority figures and unbending rules.

It's hard, even now, to accurately describe Mrs. Berryman's smile as she told me she was sorry, but I was a juvenile, not an adult, and I should select my reading material from the juvenile section. I told Mrs. Berryman I had read all those books. I don't think she entirely believed me. But that smile never left her face. It was a smile that said: "I may look like a nice little old lady sitting behind a desk in a room full of dusty books that rarely get checked out, but if you say one more word about checking out adult fiction, I'll have to speak to your mother."

Well, there are limits to every boy's crusades. So I took the initiative to tell my mother what had happened. My mother had a nice chat with Mrs. Berryman. Even though I wasn't there, I'm pretty sure they exchanged smiles. In the end, I took home an armload of adult fiction.

You would think that anyone who would take on Mrs. Berryman would be a vigorous advocate of unfettered Internet access at public libraries. But I'm not. Let me try to explain.

Mr. Paulson used an interesting analogy in what he wrote (above). He said the Internet is like turning on a water tap. I don't know about Mr. Paulson, but when I stand in front of the bathroom sink, I have a choice of hot or cold. Sometimes I blend them together. Frequently I choose not to turn either one on. If I saw a child turn on the H faucet and put his hand under the scalding water, I'd do something about it. Pronto.

Another bit of imagery from Mr. Paulson: The Internet is like a moving van full of books representing every imaginable idea. True, the Internet has seemingly boundless content. But there isn't a community public library in the world that has every book in print. Choices are made every day about which books to buy, which means similar choices are made about which books not to buy.

Most communities have a pretty clear idea of what is acceptable and what isn't, even when doing a polka on the thin ice of censorship.

There's no question in my mind how Mrs. Berryman would feel about Internet access in my hometown's public library. And I bet my mother and a lot of other parents would concur. They may do things differently in Newark or in Missoula, Mont. Fine. Maybe community standards are different there.

But most every community would like to think it has a Mrs. Berryman at the public library.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.