E-mail/Chat on library Internet terminals

[Jennifer_Reiswig at UCSDLIBRARY.ucsd.edu]

     Thomas Perrin wrote...
     > For the life of me, I don't  understand why this situation 
     > bothers so many different library administrators.  Do they
     > really care what kinds of information I get?   I never
     > heard of an Interlibrary loan person restricting the kinds
     > of information obtained by a patron.  Why should electronic
     > media be any different?
     
     Once again, this whole debate is confused because people take 
     "libraries" to mean one particular thing.  The needs, resources, and 
     priorities vary widely from one library setting to another.  What's 
     obviously true in one kind of library can be equally obviously false 
     in another.
     
     In fact, we DEFINITELY restrict use of ILL.  We limit it to legitimate 
     work-related purposes.  Yes, we will get a novel on ILL, provided that 
     novel is being used for someone's research. (Do we make people prove 
     their case? No.)  The ILL service we offer is a free service for 
     work-related materials for our faculty staff and students only.  All 
     other requests, including our own users' recreational reading requests 
     (like they have time!), must go through our fee-based library 
     department.  
     
     We would very much like to limit use of our public-access Internet 
     workstations in a similar way.  I have looked at some of the filtering 
     tools, and none of them are right for us. I have had no success at all 
     with posted policy statements.  For our next round of public 
     workstations, we've hired a programmer to try to get access to e-mail 
     and news READER programs off the menu.  Here's hoping there's a cheap 
     software solution for adult-oriented library filtering soon.
     
     Jenny Reiswig
     Biomedical Library
     University of California, San Diego
     jreiswig at ucsd.edu