For Sex Education, See Librarian

At long last, here is the definitive practical guide to sexuality materials in libraries and an annotated bibliography of nearly 600 recommended books for school and public libraries. Cornog and Perper, the preeminent experts on sexuality materials for libraries, provide guidelines for materials selection, reference, processing, access, programming, and dealing with problems of vandalism and censorship. The bibliography, organized into 5 topics and 48 subtopics, annotates a collection of recommended books and nonprint materials on sexuality information for children and adults, most published since 1985. Recommended works represent a wide variety of views, including Christian and conservative.

Part I offers detailed guidance for selecting and processing sexuality materials, including vertical files, audiovisuals, and periodicals, and for doing reference on sexuality topics; lists a full range of topics and viewpoints that libraries should collect; addresses a variety of processing and access issues such as cataloging, programming, and vandalism; discusses how to deal with censorship issues relating to sexuality materials in the library; and reviews the history of libraries and sexuality materials. Part II, the annotated bibliography, is organized into 5 broad topics—sexuality and behavior, homosexuality and gender issues, life cycle issues, sex and society, and sexual problems—which are then divided into 48 subtopics. Each title is compared and contrasted with similar titles. Titles for young people include grade level appropriateness. Specialized acquisition sources are also listed for each of the 48 subtopics. Cornog and Perper point out that the key to selection of materials is balance and representativeness of a wide range of viewpoints. They have gone to great lengths to provide a wide variety of materials and viewpoints and to seek out interesting and valuable materials from large and small publishers and organizations. This is the definitive guide on sexuality information for public and school libraries.

The definitive guide to issues and resources on sexuality materials for school and public libraries.

VOYA

Let me start by saying that every librarian-school, public, academic, regardless of age-groups served-should read and use this important and unique contribution to the professional literature. Those who use the book solely for the annotated resource lists in the second part will miss the point and value of this work, which lie in the chapters exploring the history of libraries in sex education, selection and evaluation of materials, access, censorship, building a balanced collection, and, most important, exploring the reasons it is incumbent upon librarians, wherever they work and whatever their personal viewpoint, to purchase a wide range of materials for their patrons. The authors give very practical advice on how to avoid potential problems by eliciting input both from the community and the library staff, and suggesting ways to handle problems when they do arise. Included is a discussion of the genres or viewpoints to be found in the literature (scientific/medical, historical, art books, "sex crime," liberal/permissive, spiritual/new age, occultist, radical/anarchist, religious, homosexuality and anti-homosexuality, and feminist). The second part of the book contains the resources, divided into five chapters: sexuality and behavior, homosexuality and gender issues, life cycle issues, sex and society, and sexual problems. The authors make clear that a listing in the book does not necessarily reflect their own personal endorsement of a particular point of view and, most important, that the lists are not all-inclusive, but a sampling of what they consider some of the best of what is available. The chapters are broken down into smaller subject sections, with each preceded by a bibliographic essay that mentions titles (not annotated) that are supplementary to the annotated list. The major focus is on monographs, but organizations and other sources of materials are listed, as well as audiovisuals, periodicals, literature, and vertical file holdings. The annotations are excellent, providing information about content and author perspective. The treatment is comprehensive and evenhanded, and the straightforward, non-academic writing style, which is laced with humor, is a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, the choice of indexing keeps this from being as user-friendly as it could and should be. Each annotation is assigned a letter, A through E, according to the chapter it is in, so all listings in Chapter 9 are consecutively numbered A1, A2, etc.; in Chapter 10, B1, B2, etc., and so forth. However, the subsections are separated by bibliographic essays, which means for example, that A41 is on page 187, but the list continues with A42 on page 190. The problem is that in the index only the letters and numbers are provided for the subjects, not the page numbers, so the reader must not only flip through the entire chapter to find particular entries but must remember which letter belongs to which chapter and what page each chapter begins on. The only way to avoid a frustrating search is to insert tabs at each subsection. While I consider the method of indexing to be a significant flaw, it does not diminish the importance of this work. Index. Biblio. Source Notes.

MARTHA CORNOG, M.A., M.L.S., edited Libraries, Erotica, & Pornography (1991), which won the American Library Association's Eli M. Obeler Award for Intellectual Freedom in 1992.

TIMOTHY PERPER, Ph.D.,is the author of Sex Signals: The Biology of Love (1985) and co-editor of A Descriptive Dictionary and Atlas of Sexology (Greenwood, 1991).