computer centers for adults and children?

[Erin Noll]

On Tue, 5 May 1998 hyman at sjrlc.org wrote:

> Children's terminals in the children's department are more
> easily seen as an extension of your other children's services
> and less intimidating to parents than mixing the kids in with 
> adults exercising their constutionally protected right to look at
> babepix.com.  

To be frank, I think you are oversimplifying the issue. I speak
not to accuse but to articulate the experiences we have had in
the past year. We've offered Internet access for nearly a year
now and, after a three month trial period without a filter, it is
content filtered at all terminals and for all ages.  

First of all, unfortunately for libraries, (which are caught in
the middle of this whole debacle), patrons aren't just interested
in looking at materials that are constitutionally protected. If
patrons were only interested in babepix.com I'd be the happiest
camper alive. But human beings are human beings and want what
they aren't supposed to have. Our patrons, and probably more of
yours that you know or care to admit, don't just want a little
erotica. They want the hard core stuff. And, I don't just mean a
tame little threesome with some whips and chains and sex
toys, either. Our biggest problem was with obscenity -- material
that is illegal in our community and not protected by our
constitution. Our patrons were not only looking at obscene
materials, such as nausea-inducing child pornography, but leaving
it on the screens for children to find. A year ago, I would have
said filtering is horrid and bordered on sinful. Today, I've
recended ... if that means I have to turn in my intellectual
freedom fighter card, so be it. 

I think that the bigger issue here is determining what
responsibilty libraries have to their patron base. It was
determined by our Board of Trustees that our library has a
greater duty to protect the youth we serve than the "rights" of
our adult patrons. 

There was actually fear that some of the patrons viewing
pornography (mostly men) might assault some of the young Catholic
school girls that frequent our main library after school. The
question became: if one of these men pulled one of these girls
into the stacks and molested her, how responsible would the
library be for this act? It was compared to the bartender who
served the drunk his drinks before he went out on the road and
killed a pedestrian while driving home drunk. 

Now, you may not buy this. I'm not sure I even buy it. But, I see
their point. Enough of our patrons had the misfortune of walking
up to a terminal unawares to find obscenity and pornography on
the screen that there was a small, but growing, fear for our
funding. And, that was *without* threats from the Family Friendly
Libraries people.

Ideally, after a year of offering Internet access, this is what I
would recommend to any library with the physical capabilities to
do so: put the unfiltered Internet terminals in a room separate
from the reading room and require that patrons be 18 to enter.
And, make sure that they sign a waiver that makes them aware that
they may see things that will cause them to lose their lunch. Any
other terminals offering Internet access should be filtered, at
least for *graphical* (meaning visual/photo) pornography. (That's
all we filter -- hates sites, gambling sites, drugs sites, etc.
are not filtered here.)  Unfortunately, we don't have that option
at this point. 

A year ago, I was naive enough to believe that patrons would be
too ashamed to look at some of that stuff out in the middle of
the main reading room, surrounded by people of all ages. Boy, was
I stupid. In fact, I think many of our patrons were titilated by
looking at pornography and obscenity in front of others,
particularly women.

My advice: think very long and very hard before you put anything
into place for, as we discovered here, nothing will turn out as
it should and as you expect it to. Libraries are here to serve
patrons and they are the reason for the existence of libraries
but that certainly doesn't stop them from being pains in the
ass. So many of our patrons have suffered because of the
desires and behaviors of a select few. Be careful ... and good
luck to you.

Erin
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Erin M. Noll		      Kenton County Public Library		
Assistant Systems Librarian   5th and Scott Streets
enoll at kenton.lib.ky.us	      Covington, KY  41011
http://www.kenton.lib.ky.us/  v. (606)491-7610  f.(606)655-7960
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