Striking a Balance
If this doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does. From the L.A. Daily News:
“County library officials are trying to strike a balance between the right of library patrons to access information online, and the concerns of those who don’t want to see offensive content on library computers.”
Interestingly, even though the library profiled in this article is installing more permissive filtering software on adult computers, adults will still have to ask librarians to unblock sites they want to see. The frustration I’ve heard from librarians and educators (including on the comments section of this blog) is that having to unblock filtered sites is an extremely inefficient process. So why are people still using software solutions that block entire sites rather than just the offensive portions? Are people not aware of the alternatives?
