economics of internet access

[Laura Quilter]

On Wed, 9 Jul 1997, Burt, David wrote:

> >But that's where you lose me. A librarian _must_ ration book purchases.
> This is a >physical requirement. A librarian is not required to ration
> Net access based on >content.
> 
> That's actually a good point.  No, a library is not *obligated* to
> ration web access based on content.  But really, you *could* argue that
> a library isn't with books, either.  You could certainly call up Barnes
> & Noble and say "Give me 1200 pounds of paperbacks".  (And I've seen
> some fiction collections that seemed to border on this!)

	Yes, there are two possible ways of dealing with the economics of
book collection restrictions: buying in bulk with no attention to content,
or buying with strict attention to content.  I think it's clear which is
preferable. 
	Within the limited set of selected (book) content we then ration
access by short-term bestseller or new release loans, recalls, limited
loan periods, and maximum total loans to a patron (among other tactics).
This combination of tactics effectively deals with the economics of
purchasing and maintaining hard-copy collections.

But the economic issue with regard to internet access in libraries is that
patrons don't have enough access points.  Once again, we can ration the
access points (restricting hours available on the machines), or we can
ration by content.  Unfortunately, in this case, rationing by content is
not going to solve the problem -- of not enough access points.  To solve
the problem of not enough access points we would still have to ration
access to the machines -- and, in fact, that is the only step required to
solve the problem of not enough access points.  Other steps -- such as
content restriction -- are unnecessary add-ons.

A small point of detail regarding uses of terms such as "collection
development," "filtering," and "censorship."  Effectively, they are all
the same thing -- restrictions to patron access to information.  However,
in terms of the motives behind them, I would consider "collection
development" to apply to a situation when librarians are trying to
maximize their use of resources for the use of patrons.  When
content-restrictions are applied unnecessarily -- an unnecessary barrier
to patron access to information, as in the case of filterware -- I would
consider it censorship.

Laura Quilter / lauramd at uic.edu
Electronic Services Librarian
University of Illinois at Chicago