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For Sex Education, See Librarian: A Guide to Issues and Resources. Martha Cornog and Timothy Perper. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, 403pp. $45.00.
Somehow the famous Playboy cartoon in which the shy young man says to the buxom, sexy reference librarian, "The catalog says for Sex, See Librarian" says it better. For Sex Education, See Librarian is, in the end, a rather dry, dull, straightforward attempt to promote the library's key role in sexuality education by reviewing the history of sexuality education and of sexuality materials in libraries, considering censorship and related issues, and, finally, providing an annotated bibliography for 597 books on 48 different aspects of sexuality recommended for purchase by libraries. Yet, in an age in which there has been an enormous proliferation of sexual materials -good and bad -the kind of theoretical analysis and practical recommendations made here by Cornog and Perper are truly needed.
Their initial chapter, which deals with the role of libraries in sexuality information, is especially valuable as a pro-acquisition, but balanced, presentation of the issues involved as libraries, and librarians, make difficult decisions-or perhaps more often fail to make decisions -regarding the acquisition of materials critical to what they see as the library's function as a key provider of sex education. The...