[WEB4LIB] Re: Blocking web-based chat

[Darryl Friesen]

> How is this censorship?  Chat and e-mail are functions.  Prohibiting the
use
> of those functions is a policy like saying "no wearing of hats" in the
> building or "no eating in the library."  Prohibiting one from seeing
obscene
> materials is censorship...there is a difference.  Gee, some of us are
surely
> standing up for a wild-opened and chaotic society while the rest of us are
> trying to maintain some law, order, morals and sanity!

I hope that's an exaggeration for effect.

I doubt that allow a university student (or professor, or staff member) to
chat with another using the Internet will bring about nuclear winter,
another holocaust, or the decline of western civilization.  Just doesn't
seem that "wild-opened and chaotic" to me.

I understand the occasional need to block functions -- we do so here on a
few of our OPACs where use is high and machine availability low (especially
during peak times of the year) -- but the apparent need to block _every_
function deemed by one person to be not of academic value, seems to point to
a control issue.


- Darryl

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  Darryl Friesen, B.Sc.                        Darryl.Friesen at usask.ca
  Programmer/Analyst                            http://gollum.usask.ca/
  Consulting & Development, Computing Services
  University of Saskatchewan                   "The Truth Is Out There"
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