Fw: X-Stop blocking software -Reply

[KAREN SCHNEIDER]

For my book, when I faxed X-Stop a list of potential product
features and asked them to reply, the response I got indicated
that we had at last found the truly perfect filter, because the form
(which I kept) claimed to have nearly all features.  This was the
first response I had received in months of attempting to get a
reply.  As is always my practice (since I did not just fall off the
turnip truck) I then spoke with product evaluators and directly to
the company.  The product, of course, was not quite the miracle
the faxed sheet claimed it to be; the person I spoke with kept
saying, "you're right, I'm sorry, we don't have that feature."  One
of the few facts to remain was the price--it costs a pretty penny.

Electronic resource or not, my own horse sense tells me not to
trust any product that claims to be 100% effective (as Gounaud
gushed in one post to Filt4Lib), and not to trust a product I can't
get a straight answer about.  I would also look carefully at a
product's endorsers.  After all, you don't want this product to get
you into hot water--presumably, one reason folks buy these tools,
when they buy them, is to keep that water lukewarm to begin
with.  With filters, the issue that you can't see what's blocked
makes this point doubly meaningful; a filter outsources a lot of
decision-making to a third-party, and I'd want to have a lot of faith
that this party would be acting in my library's best interests. 
Whether it is acceptable to outsource this decision-making to a
third-party is something only you can decide.  Your library's
philosophy about outsourcing may be better guidance here than 
whether you are (to exhume a particularly useless distinction)
"pro" or "anti" filter; but if Baker & Taylor, which has been in the
library business a long time, could have significant trouble buying
books for libraries in Hawaii, it's worth asking if a company that
has never heard of OCLC and thinks libraries use "card catalogs"
(to quote one particularly naive vendor) is truly capable
(however willing) to select digital resources for libraries.  They
are certainly eager to make this claim; fulfilling it is another story. 
Caveat emptor, and think Pinto--your customers deserve nothing
less.  

Karen G. Schneider
opinions mine alone
Author, forthcoming: A Practical Guide to Internet Filters
kgs at bluehighways.com