blocking and censorship

[Millard Johnson]

Joe Schallan wrote:
>Absolutism about censorship is a position we cannot defend;
>fighting for raw, unfiltered Internet access in public libraries
>is a war we cannot, and possibly should not want to, win.

David Burt replied:
>Therefore, I think it's time for the focus of ALA to shift from absolute
>opposition to filters to insuring that filters do the best job they can
>of meeting the needs of librarians.

IMHO we should be more careful in analysis of the problem
and its solution.  We can provide better library service
without censorship.

Some folks have said that all selection is censorship.
Nonsense!  If your patron wants information on sheep
ranching, you are not censoring when you do not provide
him/her with information on salmon fishing.  It is not
censorship to exclude information your patrons do not
want from their library.  But leave pornography out of
the discussion - it is a loaded issue.  Consider inaccurate,
biased, falsified, self promotion and advertising.
Most libraries would not knowingly add those to their
collection - at least not without some indication that
they are examples of unreliable or deceptive information.
These are interesting museum artifacts of information.
Unlabeled, they are information pollution.  I think we
should no censor these things by suppressing their creation
but they do not, IMHO, belong in the library.

If we think of the library as a subset of the total information
in the universe that is especially tuned to the needs and
interests of our clients the net can be our best resource.
But we do not do our clients a favor when we simply dump
in everything.  That is an abrogation of our responsibility
to act in the interest of our clients.

There is a place for advertising - even pornography, but 
except in a few rare specialized libraries, that place is
not the public library.  If we do our job at selecting
we will not have to deploy censorship software.
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Millard F. Johnson zendog at incolsa.palni.edu
"I would rather risk failure than achieve it without risk"
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