New Filtering Survey

[Filtering Facts]

Karen Schneider wrote:
>In librarianship--as elsewhere--the quality of service is not measured by
>the number of complaints received.

>
>There has yet to be one study involving the impact of filters on the public
>library user.  Additionally, we do not know how what complaint mechanisms
>were available.  Approaching staff?  Emailing through a website?  And what
>other factors were in effect?  Could sites the patron felt should be
>accessible be overridden?  Did the patron know that the sites were being
>blocked in the first place?  (In at least one case, a library chose to
>disable the denial-page feature and bounce the user back to a main page.)
>If a patron sees "Cyber Patrol Code 2," does the patron know what this
>means?  Finally, most filters keep their site lists proprietary (for valid
>business reasons, but they are hidden all the same).  This means a very
>important quality-assurance and research tool is unavailable.
>

The level of complaints is certainly not the best measure, but it *is* one
measure, and it's much better than no measure at all.  Services that perform
better have fewer complaints.  And patrons certainly do ask for what they
want. On Thursdays, when I work the reference desk all day long, I usually
get 3-5 requests per day for the Internet.  And I usually get 1-3 "there
something wrong with the printer" requests too.  

Some of the libraries kept careful track of the level of complaints, some
were just giving an estimate.  Seven, BTW, reported that they had *never*
had a complaint.

While there are many limitations to a quick telephone survey of library
administrators, it can begin to give us some idea of the nature of the beast.  

While I don't belive Cybersitter is terribly forthcoming, CP, SurfWatch,
Bess, X-Stop, and WebSense do in fact give messages saying the site is
blocked by the filter.

It's also true that bother and embarassment would inhibit many patrons from
reporting problems.

I concluded my survey with the following:

"The question "Do filters cause significant information loss?" could be
answered more definitely with a different type of study. A piece of software
could be installed on filtered PCs in a library that records each URL
accessed, and each time a block is encountered. This data could be collected
and analyzed, and a more accurate and comprehensive answer could be obtained."

A large libary system that was filtering every PC, such as Cincinnati,
Jacksonville, or Orlando, would be perfect for a study of this nature.  

I acknowledge that my survey does not provide conclusive evidence about the
amount of information loss patrons are suffering, but taken with the other
evidence, such as the fact that porn filters are only aiming for 1-2% of the
Internet to begin with, and that "bad blocks" are likely to only amount to a
small percentage of this 1-2%, we can say that the evidence is starting to
point in a direction.  And that direction is that filters do appear to have
a meaningful impact on library service.



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David Burt, Filtering Facts, HTTP://WWW.FILTERINGFACTS.ORG
David_Burt at filteringfacts.org