Recently Asked Questions (RAQs)

[NOTE:  This question was submitted in response to the guidance posted at Minor Employees and Obscenity in the Library.

After sharing your reply with my board, we have a follow-up question seeking clarification. The question is in regards to the following paragraph:

In that regard, I can only say that inviting concerned parents to review the library's well-thought-out accession, cataloging, and appeal policies is a pro-active way to ensure parents know that the library takes both its role as an employer of their child, and as a champion of a community's intellectual freedom, seriously. Parents or guardians of minors working in New York will have already had to sign working papers; no waiver or disclaimer should be further required.

My president reads your first sentence (and the word "pro-active") and thinks that your advice is to reach out to parents upon or before the hire of a minor in order explain these policies and allay any concerns. If so, then which? Before, or after?

Whereas, I read your second sentence and think that you're saying that we're not liable -- we already have the parent's permission -- but that parents who then express their "concern" to me about any of the training materials should be given said spiel.

Can you please clarify? Thank you!

Should what we think of as the personnel policy be called Employee Handbook or Personnel Policy?

Sometime in the past, legal counsel advised a library system I was involved in, that the term "Employee Handbook" is correct. The document under now review at my library has what amounts to the rules of employment - typical sections about what the library provides, what we expect the employee to do etc. and does have a page acknowledging receipt of the document.

So what should it be called?

Thank you!

We have a school district public library board considering requiring background checks for new employees. They are concerned that they may be legally required to background check all current employees. Would there be any legal reason they would need to do so?

Our library is considering a name tag policy as part of our focus on patron service.  What are the legal "do's" and "don'ts" of an employee name tag policy?

I appreciate your thorough treatment of the topic of pornography in libraries, especially couching it in the larger context of objectionable content. Our library's policies and staff training take a similar approach.

In reviewing our Employee Handbook, our fairly standard Sexual Harassment Policy, and my staff training & orientation on the topic, one trustee raised the question of the library's liability in the case of minors -- specifically, minor employees -- being subjected to viewing pornography in their workplace. The trustee thinks that minors viewing pornography is flat-out illegal, and I don't understand the subject well enough to explain whether it's a civil or criminal liability, or who would be liable in the case of a child glimpsing an adult's perusal of graphic sexual content; or whether we, as employers, should have some kind of parental consent form for minor employees, as we employ Library Pages as young as 14 years old.

Assuming a set of library policies structured as you have previously advised, what, if any, liability does a library have for minors inadvertently viewing adult pornography? And what, if any, modifications to hiring, training, and workplace procedures do you recommend for minor employees?