[WEB4LIB] Kaiser's Study on Internet Filters

[Lori Bowen Ayre]

Kaiser's assessment of their study is stated as follows:

With a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging mandatory
filters in libraries, the Foundation conducted a comprehensive study that
indicates Internet filters most frequently used by schools and libraries can
effectively block pornography without significantly impeding access to
online health information - but only if they aren’t set at their most
restrictive levels. As filters are set at higher levels they block access to
a substantial amount of health information, with only a minimal increase in
blocked pornographic content.

In case anyone wants to see the report, here's the URL:
http://www.kff.org/content/2002/20021210a/

There are enough people out there who are using filters, that it would be
useful for people to share ideas about how to configure them as
unintrusively as possible, rather than keeping the conversation ONLY at the
"Filters Bad, Filters Good" level.  This report demonstrates that some
Internet filters can be configured in such a way that they offer some
benefit without having to pay a horribly high cost.

There are a lot of libraries out there using Internet filters and the
biggest problem isn't the fact of the filter, it is how poorly it is
configured.  Installing a filter and accepting all the defaults isn't going
to work at all in a library.  The staff needs to experiment with different
settings to find the best choices for that product in that particular
implementation.

Lori Ayre