Take a look at this issue's "Books Most Borrowed" from libraries nationwide (LJ Best Sellers Fiction and Nonfiction, p. 128). Maureen Dowd's recently published Bushworld appears, but you won't see another new blockbuster published at about the same time: Jenna Jameson's How To Make Love Like a Porn Star. Even on the longer lists of 100 nonfiction titles from which our rankings derive, there's no sign of Porn Star. Despite the oft-heard accusation that libraries are a hotbed of Internet porn, it seems they're still not the place to go for the hardcover version.

Personally, I couldn't care less. Given my own feelings about pornography as objectification and exploitation, Porn Star isn't my kind of book. I didn't like Madonna's Sex either, and both books came out too late for an LJ review. In fact, the publisher kept Porn Star under wraps until just before its publication date. Somewhat surprisingly, the memoir got a hefty review in the New York Times Book Review (9/5/04), which concluded of the nearly 600-page tome, "If you could overdose on autobiography, this book would be lethal."

It seems ironic that in a more sexually open era than when the much more visually graphic Sex came out in 1992, there are precious few volumes of Jameson's book in public libraries. Librarians are viewed, and view themselves, as defenders of intellectual freedom and the public's right to read, but they still purchase certain categories of books warily.

A cursory search of library catalogs in mid-September, a month after Porn Star had already hit some national best sellers lists, revealed that neither Chicago nor Los Angeles public libraries owned a copy. County of Los Angeles Public Library listed five copies on order and New York Public Library had ordered 20. Multnomah County PL (Portland, OR) had eight copies and 80 holds, not insubstantial but certainly not a "best seller." Hennepin County Library in suburban Minneapolis had five copies on order and 49 holds. The lack of early reviews for the book may have engendered a wait-and-see attitude by librarians: wait for patron demand to trigger purchase on an unknown quantity.

That so few titles are on their way to library shelves also attests to the quandary librarians face in balancing local tastes, their own predilections, individual demands, budget allocations, and much more when they make purchases. Nevertheless, the absence of the book confirms what some of my librarian friends have said for years: we merely give lip service to the First Amendment. We bypass some books with sexual content to forestall challenges to the collection before they even arise.

Given the current climate of religious conservatism and tight budgets, perhaps that's not so surprising.

Still, there's a dichotomy in the way librarians deal with sexual materials. Many librarians purchase erotica like the novels by Zane. Many support unfettered access to the Internet for adults in their libraries. At the same time, they practice self-censorship of books on sex.

As one librarian who had purchased Porn Star pointed out, "There's a distinction between providing a service [access to the Internet] as opposed to a selected body of resources [the collection]." Even she admitted, however, that "we may not be as open-minded as we pretend to be."

At a time when the principles of intellectual freedom are being strained by the practices of the current administration, I might wish the profession wasn't beset by this schizophrenia. Nevertheless, unlike most of us, library workers are on the front lines of intellectual freedom daily. They defend challenged books, act upon carefully thought-out library policies that protect access to all types of materials, and oppose the draconian provisions of the Patriot Act. I can't fault them if they didn't make Porn Star a priority purchase.