[OPLINTECH] How do you handle Internet filtering

[Mann, James H.]

GCPL does not block social networking sites except on our webpac profile.
Here's me 2 cents....
1. You can filter because of community standards, the ORC, or CIPA aka e-rate. This is a really simple filtering solution where you're just filtering sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.
2. You can filter to conserve bandwidth, although I'm not sure filtering is the right term in this case although you might use your filtering software versus a port blocker. This is not a legal decision but a board decision and from an IT stand point it's good job security because if you block MySpace today and Skype tomorrow you can look forward to blocking Hulu this weekend. And after you have figured that out you can start blocking the websites for all the TV networks to keep your patrons from watching their stories on your public computers. Oh, and did I mention NBA, MLB and Nascar?
At the end of the day you're offering your patrons a "library" computer with access to the catalog, and your databases...it's a way to go.

My theory is that people who are smarter than me make these kinds of decisions and I just try to either argue them out of it or figure out how to do it.

Jim Mann
Technology Coordinator
Greene County Public Library
76 E. Market St.
Xenia Ohio 45385
(937)352-4000 x1210
mailto: jmann at gcpl.lib.oh.us
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." - Mario Andretti.


-----Original Message-----
From: oplintech-bounces at oplin.org [mailto:oplintech-bounces at oplin.org] On Behalf Of shivelri at oplin.org
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 2:59 PM
To: oplintech at oplin.org
Subject: [OPLINTECH] How do you handle Internet filtering

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for feed back as to whether your library has filtering for patron computers and if so what kinds of things do you filter. We currently porn, anomomizers/proxy, and social networking except Facebook. The reasoning for the social networks is reports of people looking at porn on most of the sites complained about by patrons. I'm sure the first two everyone can agree on but I am interested in feed back on social networks. Please lets keep it civil too. I block believe at least Myspace should be block because the amount of malicious scripts and flash animations, music feeds, etc. taking up alot of bandwidth. I would love to here some fact based reason to block or not.

--
Richard Shively
IT/Webmaster
Greenville Public Library
520 Sycamore, Greenville Oh. 45331
937-548-3915