I concur. The term 'adult' is open to interpretations. Someone may decide to flag the novels of Lawrence Sanders as 'adult' only because there is a lot of boozing in them. Or someone may disagree with a particular religious view and flag another book as adult. And what about the books of Stephen J. Gould on evolutionary biology? I suspect that some people may want to flag those as 'adult' and limit their circulation. So, let us just be specific on what the book contains and for the rest. . . caveat emptor! Not to talk about the bizarre racist thriller novels by Andrew macDonald, like The Turner Diaries. Just warn the viewer and let them decide if they are worth reading. Guido Guido D. Corona IBM Accessibility Center, Austin Tx. IBM Research, Phone: (512) 838-9735 Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx Visit my weekly Accessibility WebLog at: http://www-3.ibm.com/able/weblog/corona_weblog.html "Mary Otten" <maryotten@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent by: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 06/07/2004 02:08 PM Please respond to bksvol-discuss To "bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> cc Subject [bksvol-discuss] Re: Adult rating the problem with giving things adult ratings for only minor language issues or whatever, is that people who have no access to the adult rated books will never see your long descriptions explaining why the book was tagged as adult. the cut off age for bookshare is 18. So some where along the line, we're going to do somebody a dissertvice, since by flagging something as adult, we cut off access to 10-year-olds and 17-year-olds alike. There are plenty of things I wouldn't want a child under say, 12 or 13 reading. But by the time that same person is a junior or senior in high school, then why not? Language standards in particular have become a lot more liberal in recent years. Just look at what's allowed on regular tv these days. The whole question of what is or isn't adult reading and at what age it becomes acceptable is a huge messy quagmire. I tend to prefer to allow more access with caviats as appropriate in the description, rather than flagging the book as adult, thereby ensuring that nobody under 18 can even know that its available. Mary