Just a personal perspective ...in one sense, all that Peter says might be
"true", but does it really address the underlying issues?
To my mind this is as much about perceptions and futures - about what the
public library service should be and is becoming - as it is about "rooting
out the odd naughty child".
By their very nature, children are generally perceived not to be capable of
being fully responsible for their actions & perceptions ... and yes, growing
up involves all sorts of "positive" & "negative" pressures, expectations and
experiences to shape them towards becoming independently responsible for
their actions.
- Without wishing to enter into any debate about adult or even 16-17 year
olds, public library internet facilities can & do open up access to types of
material that are totally alien to any concept of a public library service
"for children".
- Children will have increasing (and mostly) supervised net access of one
sort or another within schooltime and from an increasingly young age.
- Many will have access from home and from their friend's homes (supervised
or not). Their expectations will increasingly be to have some sort of net
access.
- Parents' perceptions of the public library has been and I would argue
should be as a relatively safe environment for their children. There is
always vigorous contention on the margins of this but light-years away from
access to soft porn, never mind hard core material.
- Do we want "that we are an unsafe place" in this respect to become a
common perception?
- Generally speaking, it really isn't practical to expect library staff to
closely supervise internet usage and many of the more general web
filtering/blocking processes & procedures are better suited to monitoring
and intervening for adult "misusage. (Yes, in this instance one could argue
with hindsight that given the child's earlier history he should have been
closely monitored)
- If we cannot provide a "safe" & attractive to them net access environment
for younger children, the implications are various and mostly "not good".
- If potentially unsafe, there is the potential community/political risk of
eroding our goodwill capital as a safe and suitable environment for children
... often unsupervised by parents while in the library where all stock is
carefully selected to generally support this "safe" perception.
- If we deny net access unless personally supervised by a parent/responsible
adult, the end result is all too often basically no use by the majority of
children. After all, how would they react if a parent was follow them round
the shelves to scrutinize every book the child took off the shelf before
letting the child get at it? Have the vast majority of parents really got
that much time available anyway?
- The whole point is for children to develop the sense of self and self
interaction with people, places, thoughts & experiences without too much
close supervision, but in a supportive and relatively safe environment.
- One could argue that this applies as much to their emotional and
intellectual environments as it does to their physical environment.
- So what to do?
- If we don't provide attractive net access do we run the risk of coming
across as a redundant/irrelevant service, failing to keep up with children's
perceptions & needs, for all or part of which they will find alternative
sources.
- If we come across as too easy-going and "dangerous", we run the inevitable
risks associated with this.
- Whichever way we "jump" what are the longer term implications for the
role, perhaps the existence of the public library service?
- Consistency across public library services may not seem a major issue, but
bad publicity and general perceptions know no boundaries.
- Theoretical and practical technical/policy/service level solutions are
many, various and have been debated up and down and in and out for some
years now. But this doesn't mean that many services have come up with a
universally applicable suitable "package deal". Local circumstances and
technical/corporate ICT environments are so varied and a local solution
isn't necessarily anything other than the least worst option so-to-speak.
- Do we need/have we got a national "policy/code of
conduct/protocols/standards" approach to help develop some consistency of
approach ... safeguarding younger children yet providing them with adequate
net access?
- Should the public library service as a whole be "required" to meet these
parameters if they exist or were to be developed
- Does this require a strategic and national joined up approach and the
further development of "technical/service" packages to suit?
- Are there technical solutions that will meet such parameters in a plethora
of realworld technical and corporate/service environments? Had the People's
Network been capable of being developed more along the lines of a standalone
national network (yes, very much more expensive) universally applicable
solutions might have been a good deal easier technically if not
"politically".
- Perhaps the wider technical/political/commercial issues involved are just
too big and difficult for us to address as a public library service?
Hopefully, I'm "out-of-date" on this and there are holistic practical
solutions "out there".
Mike
Mike Maguire
Group Librarian S & E Devon
Devon Lifelong Learning
01392 384223
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.devon.gov.uk/eal/
Unless otherwise stated the views expressed are
personal and not necessarily those of Devon County Council
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Edwards [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 27 February 2001 11:54
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Child accesses porn on the web in a library
>
> This kind of thing happened regularly in a library I worked in two years
> ago. All I can see from the article is an outraged parent who should have
> known better. With the amount of hype about levels of pornography on the
> Internet, shouldn't people with children be a little more wary when they
> sign consent forms to allow their children to use the internet in their
> school or library? We had consent forms in our library which parents
> signed
> without reading, and information leaflets which were likewise ignored. If
> parents then came in to complain about their children accessing
> pornographic
> or violent websites, they could withdraw their consent and their child
> would
> not have access to the service any more. The service at the time was
> unfiltered and uncensored, but for the majority of the time, you have to
> actively seek out this type of material, and users were regularly thrown
> out
> of the building for flaunting the guidelines (our acceptable use policy).
> If
> the child in the article had been accessing this material regularly (which
> he had) he should have been closely supervised by staff and the parents
> informed of his offensive behaviour (this formed part of our acceptable
> use
> policy).
>
> Peter Edwards
> (Newham)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hanstock, Terry [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 27 February 2001 10:50
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Child accesses porn on the web in a library
>
>
> There's a story in the Ipswich Evening Star about a 10 year old Suffolk
> boy
> accessing "porn" websites at his local library. Full details at:
>
>
> http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/Content/news/htm/010226porn.asp
>
> Terry Hanstock
>
> Nottingham
>
>
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