“Library Board Thanked for Blocking Porn With Internet Filters”

http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2011/10/library-board-thanked-for-blocking-porn.html

Thank you for this. It is so heart-warming to see morality and intelligence in an obviously peer-reviewed publication.

London, in Oxford County, is also adjacent to Middlesex County, where a lot of LPL patrons live. Forget “breast cancer” as an example of what would get blocked with filters. How about the Optimist or Kiwanis Clubs of Middlesex whose websites get blocked because they have the word “sex” in them? Those poor farmers, not able to find out when the next country fair will be held, LOL.

I haven’t worked in a public library for very long, so I have only encountered one instance of someone viewing porn on a computer. In that case, it was photo attachments in her email (yes, HER. A 60 year old her!). Granted, her hands were not in her pants, but the images were clearly visible to me from the information desk. When I went over to her to ask her to close down the website, I learned that she was in Hotmail! No filter would ever catch that, especially if the images are labelled IMG009 or something.

I am a children’s librarian. I don’t like porn, period. I especially do not like porn in the library. I can not defend someone’s right to view porn. (I also have a bit of an issue with violence and we seem to have no issue with the online video games that people play, where a 2 year old is watching their older sibling shoot people in the face).

But just because I can’t defend the right to view porn, doesn’t mean I can defend restrictions on other materials, either.

All these people who have issues with porn in the library actually are objecting to porn itself. Until they are willing to take on the porn industry (yeah, right, like that’ll ever happen – it’s far too lucrative), the burden should not rest on a librarian’s shoulders.

I do know that one of the academic libraries I worked at had Playboy on microfilm. It was a hoot. Everything was reversed into negative image! Lots of white and black :)

take a few bucks per capita out of the libraries’ budgets- since they won’t be dealing with these people anymore- and just set up shop for the services these people obviously need.

In the long term, the US will eventually come to agree with European countries who have institutionalized the notion that internet is a basic human right. Give everyone broadband as a basic human right and they can exercise their right of information access to the home, where it belongs.

In the mean time, here’s a thought. Kick off a screen-saver whenever one or the other hands leaves contact with the keyboard.

I don’t see why it would be so difficult to designate an access-controlled area or computer for “mature information” … the challenge would be in granting appropriate levels of “privacy” to prevent deviant behavior … and maybe a no-hands-in-pants policy? What kind of signage would you use for that?