managed collection of sites

[Robin Boulton]

Hi All,
I have recently encountered a problem and would appreciate any help or 
insights you can offer (although I think there may be no real solution to it).

Recently we had issues with a couple of kids accessing porn sites on 
machines in the Youth Services Dept. (Ah, sweet innocent youth! :)) Our YS 
Librarians decided that they wanted to go to a managed collection of URLs. 
They identified about 1200 sites they want to include.

We are running Win2K Server and Win2K Pro on all workstations. They all log 
in to the server to validate. We are using Active Directory and Win2K group 
policies for security. We also run PWB v. 1.26 so the browser is presented 
in kiosk mode - no URL bar.

I attempted to implement a bogus proxy approach: In the security policy for 
the YS Internet account we identified a text file which listed all the 
approved sites. If we try to go to a site which is not in the approved list 
we get a warning message and are blocked from continuing. So far, so good: 
however the problem is that we get the same message when we try to go to 
some of the approved sites (and in these cases some pages on the site may 
load while others won't, or sometimes a whole site is blocked, even though 
it's on the list.) As far as I can tell, it's because a problem site is 
calling material from another site that's not on the list. Some examples 
I've identified are: When there is an ad banner running on an approved site 
that links to an advertising site, or when there is a script running on a 
site that seems to call content from a remote site.

We have discussed three possible options:
1. Trying to identify, approve and add all the secondary sites that are 
being called and adding them to the approved list. This would be time and 
labor intensive, plus I fear it could quickly become a long-term 
maintenance nightmare trying to keep up with changes made by site operators.
2. Removing all sites which call material from secondary sites (the easiest 
and quickest way, but it would leave us with a  sadly depleted collection, 
and would eliminate many of the best of the sites chosen.
3. Using WebSense to block categories. This option is available to us but 
we spent a couple of hours looking at it yesterday and we are not happy 
with the choices we would have to make - some categories we would have to 
block are so broad as to exclude material we feel should be available.

As I said, I feel there may be no better solution than one of these three, 
but if there is one I think it will be someone on this list that has it. I 
would be grateful for suggestions, examples of how you might have dealt 
with a similar situation, or anything you feel might be helpful.

TIA for your assistance,
Robin.

______________________________________________________
Robin 
Boulton 
rboulton at linc.lib.il.us
IT 
Manager                                                              (630) 
584 0076 x 258
St. Charles Public Library District                         Cell:  (630) 
918 8738
St. Charles, IL 60174                                             FAX: 
(630) 584 3448
                         http://www.st-charles.lib.il.us
______________________________________________________



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