Paul Jones, Director of \”the site formerly known as SunSITE\” among other things, has written an opinion piece on filtering. This is nothing new but it is clearly stated.
More interesting to me is the opposing editorial by a Duke law professor.
First, I object to the broad analogy of comparing Internet sites and the Internet to books and all the books in the universe.
Paul Jones, Director of \”the site formerly known as SunSITE\” among other things, has written an opinion piece on filtering. This is nothing new but it is clearly stated.
More interesting to me is the opposing editorial by a Duke law professor.
First, I object to the broad analogy of comparing Internet sites and the Internet to books and all the books in the universe. Clearly the Internet is an entirely different medium and must be treated differently- the process of acquiring books and making them available to patrons is quite different from making Internet access available. If a library were to choose to make access available only to Internet sites they had catalogued and selected, well, I think that\’s a closer analogy. I\’m not sure it would fly with the ACLU however.
Second, and almost more disturbing to me is the author\’s assertion that his mother would desert him in the library and pick him up later because the library was a safe place then. A key point those on opposite sides of the filtering debate seem to disagree on is whether libraries should act in loco parentis. Those against filtering say that they don\’t want the role of deciding what children should be allowed to access. Those for filtering seem to think that this is the role of libraries.
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