Cyberfiltering

[Shaken Angel]

On Wed, 30 Apr 1997 Carolyn_Gonzalez at medcom1.smtplink.amedd.army.mil wrote:

>      All Concerned:
>      
>      I stopped following the cyberfiltering discussion when people started 
>      getting nasty with each other.  I'm not a public librarian, so the 
>      issue isn't directly related to my worklife.
>      
>      I fell into a discussion of cyberfilters and public libraries with one 
>      of my co-workers, a webmaster, when this idea hit me.
>      
>      Maybe libraries should have two computer banks--one for juveniles and 
>      one for adults.  The juvenile bank could be filtered or on an 
>      intranet, while the computer bank designated for adults could have 
>      unrestricted internet access.

As much as the idea of internet censorship is abhorrent to me, I think
this is the best eventuality *and* the one that will probably be put into
practice in public libraries.  Precedent already exists for this type of
operation, like in MPAA movie ratings and the like.

I'd just like to say here that since I was a kid (my mother was a
librarian) I've always seen librarians as *facilitators of access* to
information, no matter if they personally agreed with the information
being provided.  Without sounding too pretentious or dramatic or whatnot,
the idea of librarianship for me is a holy one -- to, without bias, help
people *get* to information.  The idea that a librarian might be in favor
of restricting access to information across the board in the manner that 
I've heard some people on web4lib suggest is extremely depressing.

-- john f., miami university library systems