Filtering

[Sheryl Dwinell]

At 10:04 AM 7/3/97 -0700, you wrote:
>I was wondering if the technology and resources existed for a
>link-compiler like Yahoo! aimed at children/youth.  I am thinking of a
>resource which has librarians looking at the sites, giving their judgment
>of the content, and being able to not include those sites with
>inappropriate material (i.e. material which is illegal to provide to
>children).  If such a search engine could be used to only search those
>sites (like Yahoo! does), and if a browser could be modified to not allow
>one to open a location (like Netscape's 'Open'), 

Yahooligans and other sites which have searchable databases of kid-friendly
web sites would be an example of this.  You can disable a browser so that a
user can't open a location, so that would take care of that problem.
However, you can get to Yahoo from Yahooligans, and then on to Alta Vista
or any of the other search engines and search the universe of the Web.  So,
your search engine of kid-friendly URLs would need to eliminate the
possibility of a kid finding a way to another broader-based search engine.
Then of course there's the possibility of one of your kid-friendly sites
having a link to, oh let's say Microsoft's home page where they can find
search engines and other lists of sites that may or may not be what you
want children accessing.  I think that if you really want to make sure kids
don't go beyond where you want, you'd have to use some sort of site
blocking software.  



Sheryl Dwinell
Cataloger/Database Management Librarian
Memorial Library * Marquette University
P.O. Box 3141 * Milwaukee, WI 53201-3141
414-288-3542 * dwinells at vms.csd.mu.edu