Library Lawsuit

[hyman at sjrlc.org]

Thank you, Ann. I used to do a little slide demo of how hard it was to get
porn to just "pop out at you" on the Net. I stopped doing it because it
was no longer accurate for the reason Ann describes as well as the
increasingly aggressive marketing/technical practices of porn sites. Even
when sites don't exactly pop up, they aren't nearly as difficult to
stumble upon (especially if you're a kid who doesn't pick up on a clever
play on words) or to arrive in the middle of through a search engine.

All of that aside, it is a surefire mistake to get involved in guessing
children's motives and blaming parents or children.  Parents are a large
and traditionally supportive group and blaming them is a place we don't
want to go. The reality is that this is a challenging time for parents and
librarians and the stuff on the Net is way more graphic than anything that
a naturally curious kid (like we were, remember) could find on the adult
shelves in the library or in the magazine rack at the  7-11. A parent
who is shocked and dismayed by this stuff doesn't have to be a right wing
nutcase and their kid doesn't have to be a "behavior problem".

Karen Hyman, Executive Director
South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative
10 Foster Avenue, Suite F-3
Gibbsboro, NJ 08026
Phone: 609 346-1222
Fax:     609 346-2839
Email: hyman at sjrlc.org


On Tue, 2 Jun 1998, Ann S. Owens wrote:

> > > Ah, the files and trash didn't just pop up in front of the child.  
> 
> I've been following this thread, and, after reading this, I just had to
> add my two cents: files and trash *can* just pop up in front of the
> child, and has, in my library, when the child used the machine after an
> adult.  It happened while the child was sitting at the terminal with his
> mother, with the librarian looking on.  I do not believe filtering is
> the answer; it would be nice, though, if there was some way of erasing
> the history automatically after each user.
> -- 
> Ann S. Owens
> (asowens at ix.netcom.com)
>