Library Card Keeps Kids in Their Place : Censorship: Oak Lawn, Ill., plans to confine youths under 14 to the children’s room of the library. Time magazine would be off-limits, as would “Fahrenheit 451.”

See Dick and Jane run--as long as it’s not from the children’s room to the rest of the Oak Lawn Memorial Library, where trustees have adopted a “PG-13” library-card policy.

Beginning in September, parents of children under age 14 will have the option of a library card that would restrict their young to the children’s room of the library. Period.

Time magazine--in the periodical area--would be off limits. Ray Bradbury’s book, “Fahrenheit 451”--in adult fiction--would be out of reach. So would “Who’s Who”--upstairs in the library’s reference section.

Trustees say in an age in which children are bombarded with violent and illicit images, the card will give parents the option of confining their children to appropriate reading material.

Parents who aren’t interested in the special card may still get cards for their children that will give them free rein of the library.

“I think the issue here is parental rights,” said Dave Gallagher, a seven-year trustee of the library who voted in favor of the plan at the board’s June meeting.

“As far as I’m concerned, the whole policy puts it into the hands of the parent and takes it away from the library, a government body,” said Gallagher. “The parent has a choice--and that’s the key word here, choice.”

Under the plan, kids wishing to leave the library’s L-shaped children’s area would be required to show a staff member their card. If they have the special juvenile card, they will not be allowed to leave the room.

The proposal, which passed, 3 to 1, with three members absent, has met with the approval of some parents.

“I wouldn’t get the cards for my kids, but I wouldn’t criticize the board for issuing them,” Grace Kreten said recently as she browsed through the children’s section with her children, 10-year-old Kelly and 6-year-old Peter.

“If you’re on top of things as a parent, then the library doesn’t have to be,” Kreten said.

Twelve-year-old Jason Pollard, a fan of sports books, shrugged when asked about the new policy, saying: “I don’t care what they do.”

Others questioned the wisdom of the policy.

“The library should be a place where everything is available,” said Donna Kordas, who regularly brings her four children, ages 2 to 15, to the only library in this suburb south of Chicago.

Oak Lawn librarians refused to discuss the new policy.

Oak Lawn is not unique in instituting such a card--nearby Arlington Heights has a similar system already in place. Officials of the American Library Assn. said they feared the cards were a bad precedent.

“If just one parent signs that card that denies a child free access in the library, we’ve been set back,” said association president Richard Dougherty. “Kids who read succeed. Anything that puts barriers in front of that is not good.”

The association does not keep statistics on how many of the nation’s 103,000 libraries have such systems, although the trend has been away from them, said Judith Krug, director of the association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

“But every once in a while, like in Oak Lawn, the trend is reversed,” she said.

Some child and adolescent psychiatrists also questioned the proposal.

“The more children read, the better off they are,” said Dr. Aaron Esman, an adolescent psychiatrist who teaches at Cornell University Medical College in New York. “It almost doesn’t matter what it is. For libraries to discourage children from reading is inappropriate developmentally and culturally disastrous.”