I think that filtering's probably a necessity in public libraries, if only
to cover our backs when people complain about the things that can be found
on the internet.
Personally I'd want to have different filtering régimes on "children's" and
"adult" workstations: the medical pictures could be entirely appropriate for
an adult but entirely inappropriate for a child (coincidentally this was the
main reason why we originally only provided internet access for adults). I'm
not sure that we've worked out how we would want that to work in practice
yet but it would probably involve having to run two different sets of
filtering software, which I suspect could be a lot of hassle to maintain
unless done just so.
Again personally, I would *always* get parental permission for the child to
access the internet in the library, if only so that they get the opportunity
to see a piece of paper that includes a form of words along the lines of
"people using these workstations are not supervised" (we don't have enough
bodies at the front line to supervise the use of PCs all the time and do
everything else that's necessary to provide a library service).
Steven
> ----------
> From: leech, helen[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To: leech, helen
> Sent: 16 May 2001 14:20
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Filtering?
>
> I'm looking for some ideas. We've got public access terminals in all our
> libraries and do not have filtering software. Recently a child of
> fourteen
> was using the Internet in one of our junior libraries and was looking at
> horrific medical pictures. A member of the public has protested strongly,
> and we are trying to think what action we should take. We are very
> reluctant to install filtering software.
>
> Our options seem to be:
> Install filtering software, across the board or on any machine children
> are
> going to use
> Move PCs out of junior libraries
> Remove Internet access from junior library PCs
> Say that children (under the age of?) wanting to use the Internet have to
> have a parent present.
>
> Can anybody suggest other options, perhaps from a technological point of
> view?
> Many thanks
> Helen
>
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