One Librarian's Story By Heidi Borton

[Skip Booth]

Ok.... That did it. I have had it with people making Public Libraries out to be a
scapegoat. And what is worse is that most of the blame falls on individuals like
this. Pornography on the Net is not "our problem". It is everyone's problem. Just
attempting to block or filter the problem is not the solution. We have hashed and
rehashed lthe reasons so I am not going to go into this. Organizations and
Individuals need to target the real culprits, the ISPs which supply disk space to
this stuff without insuring adequate safeguards for children and those that allow
patently illegal content on their servers. Don't tell me this is impractical.
These are the real abusers of the Internet. Libraries just happen to be
convienent targets. The real problems are the jerks that put up sites with
targets like Little Women. ISPs are commercial entities and if it was
unprofitable for them to host these sites or provide bandwidth to traffic in this
junk they would not do it. Why not Boycott BBNPlanet or Bell Atlantic for
providing bandwidth and leave the libraries alone? Because it is easier to attack
us. Well damn it is doesn't stop Johnny from getting this stuff. He'll get it
from home or from a friend's house. That kid in California is going to find it no
matter what we do because its there, not because we have provided access.
In the library we have desks or tables and comfy chairs. The user come in and sit
and work on whatever they want. If a person brings in Hustler and sits at a table
and "reads" there is nothing we can do as long as that person is not waving the
centerfold around and creating a disturbance. My analogy is that we are providing
PCs as electronic desktops and if a patron is looking at something of
questionable content what is the difference?
Skip Booth
Information Systems Manager
Anne Arundel County Public Library