Libraries confronted with porn-lit

'Fifty Shades' is at the Duluth library, but you won't find this book at other libraries across the countries. Here are two views on the matter:

1. Washington Post Editorial:

"Fifty Shades of Grey," the quasi-pornographic bestseller that is doing for sadomasochism and leather crops what "Harry Potter" did for British boarding schools and broomsticks, is a publishing sensation. It's also atrociously written.

The book concerns the no-holds-barred sexual affair between a billionaire Adonis with a taste for bondage and the ingenue who takes pleasure in accommodating him. Having appeared on the cover of Newsweek in April, the book is the subject of lively debate about whether it represents a milestone in the debasement of Western culture; harmless low-brow entertainment, or a tectonic shift in postfeminist fantasies.

Regardless, what's clear is that millions of people, especially women, want to read it. So should libraries stock it? Most, citing a tsunami of popular demand, have said yes. A few, including the library system in Harford County, Md., north of Baltimore, have declined. "We don't buy pornography for the library," said the director, Mary Hastler.

Her decision has brought abuse, which is unfortunate. Like librarians elsewhere, she was doing her best to adhere to established community standards.

The trouble is that community standards are no longer set by librarians. In a wired world, they're set by communities themselves. Hastler's view of what community standards should be isn't necessarily illegitimate. But the community happens to disagree, and it pays the bills.

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2. Duluth News Tribune Editorial:

In Wisconsin, Georgia, Florida and elsewhere, libraries are ripping the "Fifty Shades" trilogy of books from shelves or aren't ordering them at all. Too steamy. Semipornographic. Too poorly written.

In Duluth, by contrast, "there has not been any talk of pulling it," Public Library Manager Carla Powers told the News Tribune opinion page.

Give the Duluth library credit. It embraced the importance of reading and literacy in the face of controversy. And it helped preserve a basic human right -- that to the freedoms of opinion and expression.