For more than a month the ACLU has been searching for a librarian who doesn’t want to cooperate and is willing to serve as a test case in the courts. “This statute trumps protections in place in 49 of 50 states, with consequences that could evoke images of Big Brother,” says the ACLU’s Gregory T. Nogeim. But librarians may be too good at keeping quiet. In February 2002, just a few months after the law’s passage, the University of Illinois Library Research Center anonymously surveyed more than 1,000 public libraries. Already 85, or 8 percent, had been forced to reveal patron information. Library officials estimate there must be hundreds more by now. Yet despite widespread outrage among librarians, so far no one has come forward, and the statute remains untested in the courts. The search for Conan the Librarian continues. There’s little chance that the role will be filled by the nation’s most famous librarian: Laura Bush.
