[WEB4LIB] managed collection of sites

[Tom Edelblute]

I don't know if you tried this or not, but here it goes.

Sometimes you need to put * wildcard characters in your list.  For
services like Newsbank, this is essential, because you don't know what
server you are going to end up on.  It works like this,
http://infoweb.newsbank.com is the portal. Then it takes you to various
servers from infoweb1.newsbank.com through infoweb9.newsbank.com or
whatever the ending point is.  Thus, I use *.newsbank.com as the
authorized site list which covers all my bases.  Sometimes the wildcard
has to go at the end of the address.  You just have to experiment with
each service one by one to find out what works.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Edelblute
Public Access Systems Coordinator
Anaheim Public Library   phone: (714) 765-1759
500 West Broadway        fax:   (714) 765-1730
Anaheim CA 92805         e-mail: thomas at anaheim.lib.ca.us

Robin Boulton wrote:
> 
> 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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