My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol. 5, #10, September 20, 1999

THAT LITTLE OLD SMUT-PEDDLER ME

I guess by Dr. Laura Schlesinger's standards, I'm a smut-peddler, and Sen. John McCain and Elizabeth Dole would probably despise me too, because I don't agree that libraries should be forced to install filters on their terminals. Like the American Library Association, I believe there are better ways of allowing children to use the net safely.

It's not like librarians are fuzzy-headed innocents who never noticed the internet can be a dangerous place for unattended children. We know that pedophiles lurk in chat rooms, and children can inadvertently come upon sexual images they may find ugly or scary or, what we probably fear more, attractive. If anything, librarians are even more aware of the dangers of the net, because we realize there are also sites that entice children to disclose personal information about themselves and their families, that use games and jokes to teach hatred, or that teach people how to make bombs.

Librarians are at least as interested in the safety of children as Dr. Laura, but we do not confuse a method -- filtering -- with that goal. One reason the American Library Association discourages the use of filters is because they are un-nuanced programs that do not understand context. They act like the filter on AOL chat groups that automatically stopped the word "breast" in any group name, forcing breast cancer patients to call themselves "hooter cancer patients" until AOL came to its senses and redesigned its software.

None of the software manufacturers will even allow users to know what sites are filtered out, or what methods they use. Many of them not only DON'T screen out hate groups, they DO screen out things like the Nikzor Project (a holocaust remembrance site), the AIDS Quilt site, the Ontario Center for Religious Tolerance, the Holy See, and Shamash (the Jewish Internet Consortium).

All of them screen out not just sex, but ideas and realities the software creators don't like. Safe Surf screens out the ruling against the Communications Decency Act as well as the UN report on the AIDS epidemic. Cyber Patrol blocks Planned Parenthood, Mother Jones, Envirolink, and the American Medical Association's HIV/AIDS Information Center. Net Nanny blocks The Banned Books Page, the National Organization for Women, and listserves including the word "feminism." SurfWatch doesn't want kids to see medical professionals' sites on birth control, STDs and sexual assault. Smart Filter blocks Nikzor, the Feminist Majority Foundation, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and a site explaining Islam. X-Stop screens out Planned Parenthood, the Breast Cancer Organization, and Access Excellence: a Place in Cyberspace for Biology Learning and Teaching. CyberSitter won't let anybody visit NOW. All the filter programs block Peacefire, a site that tests all the web filters and discloses what they block.

But even if there was a filter librarians could live with, it would still operate by negative selection. Screening out the unacceptable is only half the issue with the net; steering children to outstanding sites requires professionals who understand children and their information needs, and who understand what good, age-appropriate information and entertainment look like.

That's why librarians prefer to create library pages for children where we can link in wonderful sites. We also make it easy for kids to find stuff, organizing the sites by subject and offering search engines that search only through the sites we've chosen. When children don't find what they want on the library's own page, we invite them to search through other carefully selected children's indexes like Yahooligans! and OH!Kids. If kids still aren't finding what they need, caring adults are right at hand to help them. Furthermore, librarians teach children effective search strategies and the rules for safe surfing.

In fact, children may be safer exploring the web in a library than they are sitting at computers or watching TV at home when parents are either absent or unaware of what the kids are viewing. The best protection of all for children is loving adults they can talk to when they see something disturbing, whether it's the Jerry Springer Show, unexpected results on a search for "dolls," sites that insult the ethnic group the kids belong to, or the death of Bambi's mother (which many children find terrifying).

In an ideal world, when Dr. Laura calls librarians smut peddlers, people would say, "Huh?" and laugh in her face. At the very least they would assume that of course librarians are interested in children's well-being, and ask them what they were doing to let children use the net safely.

But someplace along the line we have grown deeply distrustful of all human beings, even mild-mannered teachers and librarians and priests, and have started turning to mechanical devices instead of human judgment to solve our problems. We substitute mandatory sentences for the discretion of judges who might make allowances for youthful indiscretions; we try to make large, alienating schools safer not with more adults to pay attention to kids, but with metal detectors and video cameras.

I can understand the temptation, because human beings are imperfect, and even the best of us have made dreadful mistakes. But if we do not trust each other, society cannot possibly work. When we tell our children that machines are more trustworthy than humans, we aren't protecting them. We're building a far more dangerous world for their future.