Censorship Needs: Real or Perceived?

[CMUNSON]

Diane Lewis wrote:
>Mr. Burt's posting points up the value of open and free (dare I say 
>unfiltered?)  debate on significant issues.  Some posters have 
>asked that the  filtering thread cease.  Or that the focus of this 
>listserve  be technical issues, rather than theoretical ones.
     
>For myself, I find it difficult to separate the nuts and bolts from the 
>*effect* of the nuts and bolts.  
     
Yes, Diane, it is almost impossible to separate the nuts and bolts from 
the effect of the nuts and bolts. From my experience, librarians tend 
to be a conservative lot and like to shy away from having to get 
involved in "political decisions." There is this denial that everyday 
work decisions have a political dimension. In fact, much of the 
everyday work that librarians do has a political dimension, everything 
from collection development that constantly chimes that "we don't have 
the money to buy porn" magazines to lousy cataloging which relegates 
some books to virtual oblivion.

The general political discussion on filtering does impact the technical 
aspect of how public workstations are set up. This involves everything 
from software to physical arrangement to the decision to not provide 
Internet access at all. But this belabors the obvious.

This is the place to have an ongoing discussion about filtering in 
libraries. This is the place where most library professionals involved 
in web projects come to debate and share ideas. It's only logical that 
the debate occur here, in the trenches.

I'm always wary of those who argue that everything has been said on an 
issue. I suspect they have a motive for seeing the debate end, becasue 
then it would appear that we, as a community, have reached a consensus. 
Then the politicians can continue to roll over us with their stupid 
attempts to cater to whatever hysteria the journalists have dished up 
this week about libraries.

Filtering promotes censorship of some valuable sites. Those of us who 
oppose filtering have demonstrated this with examples. Filtering 
doesn't work for it intended purpose, which most of the time involves 
the screening of adult sites. There's always hundreds of sites that 
don't make it onto the CyberNot list.

I really find it disturbing that librarians would allow censorship into 
their libraries in such an open-armed way. No, I don't have some naive 
idealism about what libraries are and what librarians do. I lost that 
many years ago.

Chuck