Nasa

[Burt, David]

Guy Allan Twombly wrote:

>What is the problem? I checked out Nasa.com and saw the ad. that has
you
>upset. I don't see a problem with it, but this may be because I am not
>interested in what it is offering. If people don't know the dofference
>between .gov and .com maybe that is something that we as Librarians
should
>be teaching them. Personally, I think rather than spending our time
>surfing the net looking for objectionable material, we should spend our
>time on thinking about how to better educate the public about this
medium.

The problem is that things which are clearly inappropriate to a public
library are not separated from things which are.  What I advocate is
just that: making online resources in libraries more like the print
resources.  That difference in philosophy has gotten me called Nazi,
fascist, thought policeman, etc.  It's a tough job defending unpopular
ideas, but somebody's gotta do it.

I don't buy the idea of providing porn for patrons, then training
children not to look at it, anymore that you would buy "Hustler", put in
the children's room, and then give the children classes on how not to
look at it.

  ***********************************************************
          David Burt, Information Technology Librarian 
          The Lake Oswego Public Library 
          706 Fourth Street, Lake Oswego, OR 97034
          URL:          http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/library/library.htm
          Phone:     (503) 675-2537 
          Fax:           (503) 635-4171 
          E-mail:      dburt at ci.oswego.or.us