E-mail/Chat on library Internet terminals

[Thomas W. Perrin]

1. Our public library does not restrict ILL in any way whatsoever. 
2. Email and Newsgroups are a legitimate source of research data, and a
legitimate research tool. This list is a perfect example of this.
3. The limited scope of a biomedical library, essentially a special
library, is hardly generalizable to the library community as a whole.

Thomas W. Perrin



Jennifer_Reiswig at ucsdlibrary.ucsd.edu wrote:
> 
>      Thomas Perrin wrote...
>      > For the life of me, I don't  understand why this situation
>      > bothers so many different library administrators.  Do they
>      > really care what kinds of information I get?   I never
>      > heard of an Interlibrary loan person restricting the kinds
>      > of information obtained by a patron.  Why should electronic
>      > media be any different?
> 
>      Once again, this whole debate is confused because people take
>      "libraries" to mean one particular thing.  The needs, resources, and
>      priorities vary widely from one library setting to another.  What's
>      obviously true in one kind of library can be equally obviously false
>      in another.
> 
>      In fact, we DEFINITELY restrict use of ILL.  We limit it to legitimate
>      work-related purposes.  Yes, we will get a novel on ILL, provided that
>      novel is being used for someone's research. (Do we make people prove
>      their case? No.)  The ILL service we offer is a free service for
>      work-related materials for our faculty staff and students only.  All
>      other requests, including our own users' recreational reading requests
>      (like they have time!), must go through our fee-based library
>      department.
> 
>      We would very much like to limit use of our public-access Internet
>      workstations in a similar way.  I have looked at some of the filtering
>      tools, and none of them are right for us. I have had no success at all
>      with posted policy statements.  For our next round of public
>      workstations, we've hired a programmer to try to get access to e-mail
>      and news READER programs off the menu.  Here's hoping there's a cheap
>      software solution for adult-oriented library filtering soon.
> 
>      Jenny Reiswig
>      Biomedical Library
>      University of California, San Diego
>      jreiswig at ucsd.edu
>