Chat Rooms (Policy)

[Mike Mitchell]

        We have banned all chat and gaming sites for security reasons.
Actual IRC chat room connections are pipelines for hackers into your system,
pipelines I'm not willing to open up. We disallow any downloading of files,
etc. (other than the inevitable MSIE cache stuff) and too often too many of
the chat/gaming sites want to download files to the computer. Many, if not
most, of our users are not sophisticated enough to know which sites are
doing this and which ones don't nor what's going to happen when they click
that button on the website. The same thing can be said about our staff.
Hence it's easier to ban it all. People have to read our policy and
guidelines before they are cleared for computer usage. We also post the
policy and guidelines on our website <http://www.nbpl.lib.tx.us/guide.htm>.
We've only had a few people that violate these policies and now that they
are banned from our computers the prohibited activities have decreased
dramatically. I'd hate to try to enforce this without a proxy server or
filter of some kind in a larger library though.

Mike Mitchell
Tech Services Librarian/System Administrator
Dittlinger Memorial Library
New Braunfels, TX 78130
mdmit at texas.net
http://www.nbpl.lib.tx.us

At 11:36 AM 3/23/98 -0800, you wrote:
>We are on the verge of eliminating the use of chat rooms on our four
>public access computers. This has been after much argument, discussion
>and research. As a public library we do not want to censor the use of
>the internet. Yet as a medium sized public library with only 4 computers
>for the public to use for the internet, we need to eliminate some of our
>'problems' and free the computers to those who need them for research
>and reports. Our 1 hour time limit hasn't helped as there are those who
>continually abuse the limit.
>
>So the decision has been made to enforce a policy of 'no chat rooms.' We
>are interested in how other libraries have handled this problem, and
>need some ideas for the exact wording of policies.
>
>Thank you for your time.
>
>--
>Melanie Liechty (mliechty at inter.state.lib.ut.us)
>http://www.logan.lib.ut.us
>The Logan Library
>255 North Main
>Logan, Utah 84321
>801-750-9870
>Fax:  801-753-5026
>
>
>
>