Category Archives: Information Literacy

Information literacy and Ohio SB 5 Section 3101.01

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I am not a fan of Ohio SB 5. I am not a fan of Ohio’s ban on same sex marriage and civil unions.  I am even less of a fan of people misunderstanding the changes to Section 3101 of the Ohio Revised Code proposed in SB 5. The misunderstanding is a great teachable moment on finding Ohio law and also making the case for why information literacy is necessary to have a functional democracy.

A fellow Ohio academic librarian I follow re-tweeted this on February 21:

S3101.01 OH S Bill 5: “A marriage may only be entered into by one man and one woman. ” How is that relevant to budget crisis?

I was a bit taken aback when I first read the tweet. I didn’t understand the connection between the “fiscal responsibility” line coming out of Columbus and its relationship to traditional marriage. I did what any good librarian would do and went looking for the source.

Here is the text of Chapter 3101.01.C (to be exact) as currently written in the Ohio Revised Code.

(C)(1) Any marriage between persons of the same sex is against the strong public policy of this state. Any marriage between persons of the same sex shall have no legal force or effect in this state and, if attempted to be entered into in this state, is void ab initio and shall not be recognized by this state.

(2) Any marriage entered into by persons of the same sex in any other jurisdiction shall be considered and treated in all respects as having no legal force or effect in this state and shall not be recognized by this state.

(3) The recognition or extension by the state of the specific statutory benefits of a legal marriage to nonmarital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes is against the strong public policy of this state. Any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of this state, as defined in section 9.82 of the Revised Code, that extends the specific statutory benefits of legal marriage to nonmarital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes is void ab initio. Nothing in division (C)(3) of this section shall be construed to do either of the following:

(a) Prohibit the extension of specific benefits otherwise enjoyed by all persons, married or unmarried, to nonmarital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes, including the extension of benefits conferred by any statute that is not expressly limited to married persons, which includes but is not limited to benefits available under Chapter 4117. of the Revised Code;

(b) Affect the validity of private agreements that are otherwise valid under the laws of this state.

You may recall, that the people of Ohio voted to amend the Ohio Constitution on November 2, 2004 to define marriage to be between one man and one woman. The legislature codified the amendment into the Ohio Revised Code in Section 3101.01.

Now, back to the present.

Here is the proposed change to Section 3101.01 in Ohio SB 5 ”As Pending in the Senate Insurance, Commerce and Labor Committee”

Sec. 3101.01. (A) Male persons of the age of eighteen years, and female persons of the age of sixteen years, not nearer of kin than second cousins, and not having a husband or wife living, may be joined in marriage. A marriage may only be entered into by one man and one woman. A minor shall first obtain the consent of the minor’s parents, surviving parent, parent who is designated the residential parent and legal custodian of the minor by a court of competent jurisdiction, guardian, or any one of the following who has been awarded permanent custody of the minor by a court exercising juvenile jurisdiction:

(1) An adult person;

(2) The department of job and family services or any child welfare organization certified by the department;

(3) A public children services agency.

(B) For the purposes of division (A) of this section, a minor shall not be required to obtain the consent of a parent who resides in a foreign country, has neglected or abandoned the minor for a period of one year or longer immediately preceding the minor’s application for a marriage license, has been adjudged incompetent, is an inmate of a state mental or correctional institution, has been permanently deprived of parental rights and responsibilities for the care of the minor and the right to have the minor live with the parent and to be the legal custodian of the minor by a court exercising juvenile jurisdiction, or has been deprived of parental rights and responsibilities for the care of the minor and the right to have the minor live with the parent and to be the legal custodian of the minor by the appointment of a guardian of the person of the minor by the probate court or by another court of competent jurisdiction.

(C)(1) Any marriage between persons of the same sex is against the strong public policy of this state. Any marriage between persons of the same sex shall have no legal force or effect in this state and, if attempted to be entered into in this state, is void ab initio and shall not be recognized by this state.

(2) Any marriage entered into by persons of the same sex in any other jurisdiction shall be considered and treated in all respects as having no legal force or effect in this state and shall not be recognized by this state.

(3) The recognition or extension by the state of the specific statutory benefits of a legal marriage to nonmarital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes is against the strong public policy of this state. Any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of this state, as defined in section 9.82 of the Revised Code, that extends the specific statutory benefits of legal marriage to nonmarital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes is void ab initio. Nothing in division (C)(3) of this section shall be construed to do either of the following:

(a) Prohibit the extension of specific benefits otherwise enjoyed by all persons, married or unmarried, to nonmarital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes, including the extension of benefits conferred by any statute that is not expressly limited to married persons, which includes but is not limited to benefits available under Chapter 4117. of the Revised Code;

(b) Affect the validity of private agreements that are otherwise valid under the laws of this state.

(4) Any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other state, country, or other jurisdiction outside this state that extends the specific benefits of legal marriage to nonmarital relationships between persons of the same sex or different sexes shall be considered and treated in all respects as having no legal force or effect in this state and shall not be recognized by this state.

As you probably noticed, the lines with strike through text is the part being changed.

Andrew Sullivan posted early this evening Just Balancing the Budget. He picked up on the  ”no same-sex marriage” part of Ohio SB 5 and asking what that has to do with financial reform. (I wrote him a shorter version of what I am writing here and he has since updated his post.) I did some searching and found other blogs asking the same question.  As you have probably figure out by now, there isn’t any relationship.

The proposed text to be removed in SB 5 relates to Chapter 4117 mentioned in  Section 3101.01. Chapter 4117 is the section of the Ohio Revised Code defining public employees collective bargaining. Public employee collective bargaining is what SB 5 is supposedly reforming.

Long story short…SB 5 does not insert any ban on same sex marriage or civil unions into the Ohio Revised Code. The wording that some people are jumping on has been in place for over six years. The reference to Section 3101.01 removes a reference to another section which is being overhauled.

What I find most interesting is that I don’t see any mention of Section 3101.01 in the final bill as passed by the Senate this afternoon.

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LOEX: When session content doesn’t meet expecations

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Happy Friday the Thirteenth! I thought I would address your worst conference nightmare…wasting a session. It doesn't matter if it's ALA or ALAO (that's the Ohio ACRL chapter), but I usually end up sitting through one disappointing presentation. In this case, the content delivered didn't live up to expectations created by the session title and description. 

The issue with this specific session was the use of the phrase "lessons learned" in the title and the thought provoking questions posed in description. Instead of hearing about lessons learned or best practices or tips or sage advice…I heard an infomercial.  My disappointment stems from the content presented not being scalable or applicable to another institution. Don't tempt us with "How do you prioritize your resources and staff?" to only tell us that you were able to hire more librarians and have money for an information commons. That's great for you, however it's not practical or implementable for the majority of your audience.

The only transferable "lesson learned" (and not even to my local situation) I got out of the presentation is to share laptops between library departments. Do you use laptops for instruction and for lending to students? Great! Work with circulation/access services/whomever controls the lending side to pool laptops during peak times of the academic year. Use the majority of laptops for instruction at the beginning of the semester/quarter (when instruction is high and assignments low). Reverse the distribution model at the end of the semester. Let circulation/access services use your laptops for students to borrow to work on all of those end of term papers and projects. You're probably not doing much (if any) instruction at the end of the term. It's a win-win and a great way to extend those insufficient capital expense dollars.

Feel free to take a look at the PowerPoint slides.  You might get something out of them that is useful for your institution. My lesson learned for you? Go with your gut instinct when picking conference sessions. I'll try to do a better job with all of my schedule conflicts in Anaheim.

If I could do it over again, I would have gone to hear Paul Waelchli and Sara Holladay talk about "Fantasy Sports: The Road to Information Literacy Championships." Paul and Sara win the prize for information sharing! You have to appreciate the amount of time they put into creating an amazing Fantasy Football Toolkit for Libraries. Check it out…

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LOEX: Why Does Google Sometimes Ask for Money?

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"Leveraging the Economics of Information and Scholarly Communication Process to Enrich Instruction" was the rest of the title of this session presented by Kim Duckett and Scott Warren from NC State University. Their PowerPoint presentation (1.9MB) is available and you should read through the slides because I can't do them justice in this post.

Kim and Scott started with the argument that our students are not savvy enough to know when they have left our discovery tools to access paid content. Students have not made the connection yet, even though they probably have a similar mental model. Students normally don't consider how much money is spent to provide access to electronic journal articles. They go to the library web site and get access to the content for free (with few or little authentication barriers), so it's just like a lot of other content on the open web.

Strategies they have been using successfully with upper level classes…

Start with what students already know about the peer review process and build on their prior knowledge.  Challenge assumptions by asking:

  • Why don't researchers just use blogs?
  • Do all papers submitted get published?
  • Are all journals equal?
  • Do authors get royalties?
  • How much does it cost an author to publish?

Examples of sticker shock were used to further challenge assumptions about how much scholarly content actually costs. This naturally leads to a discussion about why publishers charge so much and why libraries provide access to expensive content. They discuss the various stakeholders in the publishing process: author, publisher, database vendor, and library.

Continued discussion of the invisible web follows, where the concept that Google doesn't make a distinction when indexing content if it is free or free. The crawlers are just discovering content and making a pointer to it available for retrieval. Finally, Scott and Kim were able to leverage the existing mental model of online shopping (buying airline tickets at Expedia or Travelocity) to help the student make the connection between discovery and access.

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