ALA on Filtering

[Martin J. Cohen]

It's kind of wonderful how issues move over into questions of roles and
responsibilities. Heat aside, the interchanges on filtering seem to bring
up (but alas not resolve) the range of perceptions about what ought and
ought not to be the role of librarians in the dissemination of information
in society. In some ways these interchanges are more pointed than those
intended for the purpose on the crystal-ed list. 

It seems that the idea of what it means to be a professional varies in
this field (no news there). Some defend professional standards. Some take
professional standards to mean their own personal tastes. Some think that
a professional is afterall just an employee. 

In response to the question "Who would invest in filters against
commercial messages?" ... a university perhaps? Or a national or
international lab? Say CERN or NCSA. I recall that they came up with some
interesting software not so long ago. 

This is not to say that commercial messages are necessarily out of place
in a library.  We do collect periodicals that are supported by the
advertising in them. 

Anyway, if one wants to avoid all commercial messages, presumably one
could filter out anything from the .com domain. Or are we talking about
bleeping the ads but taking the "programming"?

Martin J. Cohen                                 mcohen at stmarys-ca.edu
Media Services and Library Systems              voice: (510) 631-4229
Saint Mary's College of California              fax:   (510) 376-6097
Moraga, CA 94575                                ars longa vita brevis