Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 20, 1995 TAG: 9505230019
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: FAIRFAX LENGTH: Medium
Derick Snow came to the Pohick Regional Library to get a book he needed for a school report, but it wasn't long before he was focused on another Fairfax County Library offering: television.
Sitting in one of the eight cubicles alongside teen-agers and adults glued to other 12-inch sets, the ninth-grader flipped back and forth between a sitcom and a TV movie, killing time until the library closed.
``It is good to get your mind off of what you are working on,'' said Snow, 16, while watching the show ``Mad About You'' one recent night.
That's not exactly what Fairfax officials had in mind several years ago when they began spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to install cable television and other video equipment in five county libraries.
Sure, officials wanted to offer access to cable television for patrons who couldn't afford it at home, but they also thought that putting 27 ``media stations'' in the libraries would give library viewers a range of cultural and educational programming.
``You would watch world events unfold on one station, then you would turn to the Bolshoi and then to the Rigoletto,'' said library Director Edwin S. Clay III.
Trouble is, few library patrons want such high-brow fare.
``The reality,'' Clay said, ``is that cable reflects the society we are in, and that is not the Rigoletto or the Bolshoi. It is reruns of `Gilligan's Island' or cartoons.''
And so Fairfax, one of the few library systems in the nation to provide patrons open access to cable television programming, seems content to let the effort die. Budget cuts and parents' questions about television sets in libraries have led the county to stop adding cable TV cubicles to new and renovated libraries.
The library board's policy committee recently balked at Clay's recommendation to replace old, worn-out television sets in libraries. The panel has been under attack by conservative groups who claim that by giving children unlimited access to cable programming such as that on MTV, the libraries are promoting sexual promiscuity.
``It is a wasteland of entertainment,'' said Karen Jo Gounaud, a conservative activist who pushed unsuccessfully last year for county officials to remove a gay newspaper from libraries. ``The only education the music channels like MTV are providing is the wrong kind, such as how to have cheap sex.''
Library board members said this week they were reluctant to get into the business of defining what channels are acceptable, which they said could subject them to complaints of censorship.
At Pohick and the other county libraries with cable television - Reston, Kings Park, Lorton and Sherwood - patrons can sit down at a cubicle, slide on headphones and channel surf on televisions featuring dozens of offerings, including news, documentaries and government programs.
But a recent survey by library staff members indicated that more than 70 percent of the viewers - most of them younger than 18 - have the television sets tuned to comedies, sports, soap operas, cartoons and music videos.
Only 4 percent of the viewers reported watching educational or art programs, while about 15 percent tuned into the news.
by CNB