Re: Net Behavior at School
sufflib@tiac.net
Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:24:48 -0400
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:24:48 -0400
Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970915132901.007e7ec0@tiac.net>
From: sufflib@tiac.net
To: Multiple recipients of list <conntech>
Subject: Re: Net Behavior at School
Here's the Cybertimes article on filters (from the NYT Online)
Edited for ConnTech to reduce its length.
Please read the full article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/digimet/091597digimet.html
Joe C.
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September 15, 1997
Librarian Puts Filtering Software To the Test and Finds It Lacking
By Pamela Mendels
Cybertimes (NYT Online)
It has an unassuming title -- A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO INTERNET FILTERS --
(Neal-Schuman Publishers Inc.) -- but already Karen G. Schneider's little
volume is creating a small stir in the world of libraries.
The book, to be issued next month, is perhaps the first to describe and
critique "filtering" software, which blocks access to potentially
objectionable sites on the Internet, from a librarian's perspective.
Schneider does not like the idea of filtering software, but can understand
why it is finding a place in libraries. "My inner impulse is always to open
access," she says. "I think that is what libraries are about, and I
wouldn't want one teen-ager to commit suicide because information he was
seeking was blocked. But I feel empathy with librarians who have their
butts in the sling in the real world, because they are in conservative
communities or they are under pressure from special interest groups who
want them to block more than a few porn sites."
What these librarians need before installing filters, she says, is accurate
information about the products, what they screen and what they don't.
Schneider found herself writing to two library e-mail lists asking for
volunteers to begin a serious inquiry into how filters would operate in
libraries. The volunteers drew up questions, based on actual patron
inquiries they had received over the years and that could arguably could
run into trouble with a filter.
Among them were: "I'd like to see Marcel DuChamp's Nude Descending a
Staircase"; "In what poem did Robert Frost write, 'my little horse must
think it queer'?" and "I'm doing a paper on cruelty to animals, including
bullfighting and cockfighting."
About 25 librarians -- some who favored the use of filters, some who
didn't, but all who shared what Schneider describes as an "I'm from
Missouri, show me" attitude toward product claims -- tested how 12
different software filters responded when the vexing questions were asked.
Among their findings were that when filters, which often can be adjusted to
screen various amounts of material, were set at maximum, about 35 percent
of the searches for legitimate material were hampered. At the same time,
she said, even "at full throttle," the filters often failed to screen out
pornography.
Filters that screen material based on keywords, and not just on lists of
potentially objectionable material collated by the filtering companies,
were the most egregious offenders, Schneider said. In one case, the word
"button" was obliterated in e-mail messages presumably because of the first
four letters of the word.
It was troubling to Schneider that some of the filters would either give
cryptic explanations when material was blocked or conceal the blocking
altogether. But perhaps most disturbing, Schneider said, was that only one
of the filtering companies would allow outsiders -- including librarians --
to see its list of banned material.
She has some practical advice for librarians considering filters. For one
thing, she urges them to test the programs first, in part to determine
whether the values of the filtering companies are in sync with those of the
community in which the library is located. In addition, she urges
librarians to turn only to programs that either eschew keyword blocking or
allow it to be disabled, and that they set the software to block only for
sexually-explicit material.
"What I say over and over again," she says, "is you have to evaluate these
products. I'm not saying don't use them, but at least test them
realistically."
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