Public libraries have no obligation to provide any particular book or web site. It’s a question of what the public chooses too make available. It’s quite appropriate to have standards.
As a taxpayer, I personally prefer the filters. Not only do they filter pornography, they also filter hate sites of various sorts. It’s unfortunate that the filters are not perfect.
How quickly will you change your tune once your library starts banning access to the Rush Limbaugh web site because “it promotes sexism, racism, and ignorance”? (hypothetical example, natch)
It’s all fine and dandy until it’s your sacred cow getting gorged…
Yep. Until you can fit into a size 6, Bessie, it’s no more grass for you.
And they filter sites concerning breast cancer and AIDS and STDs and…
I work in a branch library of a large county library system. Here is our policy:
You must have a library card and you must sign an Internet user’s agreement. If you are under 18, you must have a parent or legal guardian sign a form giving you permission to use the Internet. All of our computers are unfiltered, but that will change. Under the *Children’s Internet Protection Act[/] (CIPA), a library system must provide filtered Internet stations or risk losing federal funding. Circa September, my library will have one filtered and one unfiltered station at my library, and a parent will indicate which he/she wants their child to use when they sign the permission slip.
Any library worker who who is such a wimp as to think being exposed to Internet porn by patrons constitutes a hostile workplace should get a job in a workplace that doesn’t offend their delicate sensibilities, such as a Musak factory.
Internet filters are the antichrist. See my page on them at my Web site:
I’m bumping this thread instead of creating a new one.
There’s an article in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune about this topic.
Minneapolis librarians sue over Internet porn
12 librarians are suing for $400,000.00 a piece for having to be put in a situation they feel makes a hostile workplace.
In 2000, the Minneapolis Public Library instituted an internet policy which states:
The librarians claim that this does not go far enough and thusly are continuing their lawsuit.
One solution may be (IMHO) that the library change it’s procedures which are now:
…and change them to the fact that the system will not only track where you go, but at the end of the session provide a printout of all the sites visited to by one’s library card. If one’s library card can keep track of the books one checks out, why not the websites?
I am currently viewing this thread not at home but at my local library. Just about the monitor is this:
“IMPORTANT NOTICE: the Library’s Computer Use Policy follows the Kansas “Harmful to Minors” statute, including restrictions on viewing nudity. Library staff can visually and electronically monitor computer use for compliance and is authorized to require the user to leave the computer or the premises. Law enforcement authorities may be contacted when violations occur.”
I did once see a librarian stop two young punks from their perusal of a porn site, mostly young girls with their legs spread really wide. And how do I know what it was? I was at the next computer and annoyed by their talking and giggling. So I turned 'em in, and they had to leave. Maybe if they had just stayed quiet I wouldn’t have done anything.
Libraries have a mission to provide as free of access as possible to information to all.
Banning access to porn sites is not the same as not stocking pornographic magazines. I can’t believe this argument even gets made. Print media costs money, and the library must decide how best to use their funds, which probably doesn’t include Shaved Asians. But with Internet access, they don’t have to decide what to offer and what not to based on money. In fact, it costs time and money- that could be spent of books or more computers- to block Internet content.
There are plenty of reasons to be looking at porn besides jacking off. I’ve written more than one paper about porn, and I had to do my research somewhere. Slash fiction is a pretty complex genre with some really really interesting social implications. I’ve known transgendered people who look at transgendered porn not to become aroused, but because it is one of the few ways that their life is even acknowledged. The book Bound and Gagged by Laura Kipnis provides an interesting look at the social and artistic implications of pornography. It managed to convince even the stanchest anti-porn people in my “women in the culture of violence” class that pornography is at least more complex then simply being pure evil. Anyway, the idea is that porn aint so bad.
I think porn should be allowed in libraries, assumeing the viewer isn’t exposing themselves or create a distraction. I also thing reasonable steps should be taken (shielding computer screens, a log in process to prevent images from remaining on the screen after the patron has left) to maintain the patron’s privacy and prevent others from seeing whatever it is they don’t want to see.
I can’t belive no one back when commented on how rude and creepy it would be to look at explicit images in a public place. Jeepers!
If I was in a library where that sort of thing was happening, I would tell anyone viewing it that I thought it was disgusting behavior on their part and they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Whether I worked there or not! In the case of the original poster, who seems to be long gone, I would have no qualms about telling the kids that I would tell their parents and the adults that I would tell their spouses (unless that’s against the Hippocratic oath for librarians).
In my town, you can’t take your shoes off in the carrels or one of the workers will eventually come around and scold you!
I’m surprised most libraries don’t have a No Porn rule for the internet already!
I know my college’s computer labs had one-if you were caught-and they logged every site you were on-you had your account locked.
This debate has raged in my library for the past year with little resolution. We don’t want to deny access to the services we provide to anyone. We don’t want to filter our Internet access because we feel that filters keep out too much and just aren’t effective. But, we are sick of being the porn police.
I don’t believe that we should be offering people the option to view whatever web site they want no matter how graphic it is. So, if we see obscene sites being viewed on public computers, those patrons are warned then asked to leave if it continues. I don’t think it’s outrageous to expect people to save their porn viewing for their home computer–jeez, that’s what I do. 
I’m kind of on the fence with this one–I don’t like the idea of censorship taking place in a library, but on the other hand, if I don’t get to look at porn from my work computer, librarians shouldn’t have to!
Stick me down under the “no filters, but very publicly displayed computers and a no-porn policy”. Sorry, but it’s not the responsiblity of the government to provide people with free porn. If you really need to wank off that badly, buy your own freakin’ PC. For the few (very few) people who have a legitimate reason for checking out Hot Asian Sluts Ready To Suck You Down, they can try setting up arrangements with the library clientele. And if that doesn’t work, No Porn For You, One Year! Just have to pick another research topic, I guess.
Jeff
I’m in the ‘No Porn in Libraries’ camp. Sure, it’s a “I know it when I see it call”, but better that than no call at all. I’ll not restate reasons as I’ve nothing new to add.
Well, to some people, porn could be a randy statue that needs to be covered with drapery, Mr Ashcroft. I can think of other offensive things besides porn that I wouldn’t want to see while going through the library too. Pictures from a slaughterhouse or a peta campaign, aborted fetus from a pro-life site, or crime scene photos of murders. A couple years ago someone send me a “funny” link of an eBay auction where someone was auctioning a big ol’ log of poop in the toilet. It made me wanna ralph. People have different buttons that are gonna get pushed. What could happen is that the library could be open to lawsuits for each and everyone of these infractions as causing a “harassing” workplace. I think thateven sven had a good point of shielding the computer screens so only the user can see what’s on. Elsewise it can fall down the way of ambiguity and personal preferences.
Everyone needs a library card to take out a book, no? You could easily add this same requirement to accessing a terminal. A library card owner would have to actively request their card give “internet-access”. All cards have bar codes that need to be scanned in order to activate the computer. The computer requires rescanning every 20 minutes to continue. All web sessions are logged.
If you are under age X (14, or 16, or whatever), you can’t get the “internet-access” card w/o parental approval. Said parents would receive, via email, a monthly listing of websites visited for any card they have given such approval. (Whether they want to do something about it is up to them).
Alternatively, you could have the computer terminals activate a filtering system for anyone with an ‘under-age’ card.
The above may help with the kids searching for porn issue. Then again, it might be as successful as ID cards are from keeping kids from buying alcohol.
As for adults, and the surrounding patrons and employees, I also agree with installing shields around computer screens. Put up the No Porn signs (although I’m a bit queasy on that one…do you also put up No Hate signs?). Remind people their sessions are being logged. In fact, remind them by printing to the screen their session browser history each 20 minutes as well. Or something.
Draconian? maybe. But I think installing filters on all computers is even worse.
.02
It seems like most people here are for a “No Porn” policy with or without filters. Can I ask why? It seems to me that as long as a patron isn’t disturbing other people, looking at porn is no worse then checking your email or playing online scrabble or looking at pictures of kittens or the multitudes of non-scholarly things that people do on library computers. I honestly see no value in logging what people are looking at; all I care about is what they are doing while they are looking at it.
even sven: I don’t know if you’ve actually gone to any porn sites, but they tend to be heavy on the disclaimers saying the viewer of the site is on his own recognizance for making sure minors don’t get to look at boobies, on account of it’s illegal and stuff. Having said boobies on screen at a public library goes against that.
Second, requiring people (even librarians who are cataloguing videotapes) to look at boobies when they don’t want to as part of their job could be considered as contributing to a hostile work environment, and that’s kind of illegal and stuff, too.
You made some valid points, rexnervous, but I think what you’re recommending would be an invasion of privacy. While libraries do keep track of books when they’re checked out, we do not keep a log of what books a particular person has taken over a period of time. Once the book is returned, we have no way of knowing what the person had out (unless he/she owes some overdue fines–but even then, once they’re paid the record is cleared.)
Logging the web sites people visit would be an invasion of privacy and would possibly prevent some people from looking up information they need but may be embarassed about (such as medical conditions.) By the same token, telling parents what their kids are viewing could keep a child who is looking up information on gay/lesbian teens (for example) from getting the information they need because they may not want their parents to know about it.
As a librarian, I want people to feel that the library is a safe haven for them to come and find the information they need. I want to make it as boundary free as possible–to the point that we don’t require library cards to simply use the Internet just like we don’t require them in order to use any of our other materials while you are in the library. That’s why it is so difficult to strike a balance between individual privacy and the safety of others using our facility–but we keep trying.
I was a cachemaster at a university for a couple of years, sitting on the big pipe of everything that went in and out.
When I was bored, I would tap into the feed and see the sh*t people were looking at go past.
Not invasion of privacy IMO as only on 2 occasions was I obligated to find out who the individual was, and it was part of my JOB and in the fine print of the terms of use for computer access. But yes sometimes I did it for curiosity.
We also had a nominal ‘no porn’ rule, then later a filtering proxy (one we could override ourself - vital).
Although as a tech, I believe that all filtering software is inherantly broken, what we did worked. The exceptions and false positives that people can cite are TINY compared to what we would label ‘valid use’ in the context of a learning institution.
In fact the one time when a user was so aggrivated by not being able to view a site and escalated it up to the directors, we gave it to her and she got a pile of graphic pop-ups and complained to us again. Turns out she’d been mis-typing the url all along.
And the ISP fees dropped dramatically. Not that finance should be the issue here, but dirty video downloads are orders of magnitude costlier than text research. It was unfair to spread the costs.
… just some anecdotal opinion
OK,
what I was wanting to say was that ‘public’ library or not, any establishment has a right & responsibility to say how the space and facilities are used. They should be able to install filtering software, they should also be able to log traffic.
Heck, it’s automatic anyway, and a disclaimer that claims ‘no record is kept’ is false. I’ve done the snooping. They may claim that the record isn’t associated with your reg. number. And I’d say ‘until they compare their logs’.
It’s what they do with it that counts, and if they display the rules, well, end of argument.
While it would be good to trust everyone not to, that doesn’t work, and active monitoring (rather than prevention) is a real time-waster, not to mention the hassle of confronting people.
I don’t believe that there can be an invasion of privacy in a public area, just like you implicity assent to being filmed by the security cam at the door, you assent to being monitored on the net - as long as you understand it’s happening. You want privacy, go somewhere private. The exact privacy law may say different, but that’s drifted off topic.
PS. I surf porn, I just don’t do it at the library.
I read porno magazines, I just don’t do it on the bus, and I would not be surprised if someone asked me not to.