O.C. Libraries Grapple With Internet Porn

Things used to be simpler at the public library.

You’d go to the card catalog, look up “Bambi” and find a storybook about a baby deer.

Nowadays you go to the library’s Internet terminal, type in “Bambi” and get more than 9,000 references--from “Tammy’s Home Page” where “Thumper and Flower come out to play” to “Bambi--one of our hot Cyber Sex Toys Play Things!!! Win a FREE call!!”

Librarians, accustomed to reviewing books before they’re purchased and put on the shelves, now find that the information superhighway is delivering goods they would never have ordered. How to cope, especially with parents who fear their children will be viewing hard-core pornography, is “the issue of the moment” for public libraries from Boston to Anaheim, says the American Library Assn.

Politicians have become involved. Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the Communications Decency Act last year, making it a crime to transmit indecent material over the Internet. Two federal courts unanimously struck down the law as unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue its opinion this week.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, reacting to news reports of angry parents, decreed in February that all city computers, including the library’s, must have filtering programs to screen out Internet indecency.

That started the ball rolling, says Deborah Liebow, assistant director of the American Library Assn.’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. Now the idea that the Internet must be sanitized for libraries, especially for children, is spreading. “The problem is, everyone’s idea of ‘sexually explicit’ is different,” she says.

Take the Orange Counties, for example.

The Orange County Library System headquartered in Orlando, Fla., connected 70 computers to the Internet in August, but the staff’s first view of Internet porn prodded the library staff into action.

“We said, ‘Wait a minute. This is not what we offer. We don’t offer hard-core pornography,’ ” says Marilyn Hoffman, the library’s community relations coordinator. “We’re all for intellectual freedom and freedom of information. We just don’t consider hard-core pornography as intellectual.”

All 70 computers now have filtering programs.

But in Southern California, the Orange County Public Library started with a different premise. That system, which has branches in 23 Orange County cities and communities, has received state and private grants to add nine Internet terminals. Like its five existing terminals, the new ones will have no filters.

“We’ll have full access for patrons at the beginning,” says Maureen Gebelein, the library’s manager of automated services. “Like our books, we won’t restrict a minor child’s access. That’s a parent’s responsibility. We won’t be looking over their shoulders. We don’t plan on using the [filtering] software in the beginning.”

“In the beginning” is Gebelein’s concession that things can change, and fast. Ask John Wallach, librarian in Dayton, Ohio, and chairman of the state agency that provides Internet access to all Ohio public libraries.

The Ohio system, completed in April, connects 250 main libraries, but one complaint from one library near Cleveland that children had called up pornography prompted the state House of Representatives to pass a bill mandating that all Internet terminals be filtered. The state Senate softened the bill to permit filters, and the issue is being thrashed out in committee.

“We have not had a problem here in Dayton, and the other libraries have not had a problem, but this is a very, very popular issue,” Wallach says. “Any time you get into children and illegal material, you have a very popular topic to take off on.”

If the Ohio Legislature mandates filtering library Internet access, “I can guarantee we’ll be sued by the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union],” Wallach says. The ACLU in Florida has teams of attorneys preparing a lawsuit against the Orange County Library System’s filtering policy.

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The California State Library estimates that Internet access is available to patrons in 65% of the state’s library systems. But of those surveyed in March, only 22% reported using Internet filters.

Three-fourths of the library systems had experienced no Internet “incidents” involving children, but they had prepared for them. The vast majority--85%--had formally adopted Internet use policies.

The number of California libraries offering Net access is rising rapidly, due in part to state library InFoPeople grants made to about 430 libraries since 1993. But the prospect of controversy has persuaded some libraries, such as Anaheim’s, to bide their time.

Anaheim’s one Internet terminal is for staff use only. The staff now is waiting to see what the Supreme Court has to say. “I can’t think of anything that’s required so much advance planning and analysis,” says Kevin Moore, Anaheim’s central library manager. “This is the toughest issue we librarians have ever had.”

In the 1960s, Anaheim was the national battleground in the bitter war over sex education in schools. Since then, “Anaheim has always been on the cautious side, and in a way, it’s paid off,” Moore says. “This community has traditionally been conservative. It’s one thing to be cutting edge. It’s another to make a foolish decision.”

Fullerton’s library, however, plunged into the Internet back in 1994, when it made two terminals available for patrons of high-school age and above. They offer unfiltered access.

“We have not had the kind of abuse that is touted in the newspapers,” says Joanne Hardy, adult services manager. “It’s not come up. Nobody has come running to us to say, ‘I just saw porno on the screen or I can see it over that man’s shoulder.’ ”

After two years of Internet access in all its libraries and branches, the Los Angeles Public Library still believes it’s better off without filters on its terminals.

“We feel very strongly that filtering is too difficult to do,” says Joan Bartel, the library’s director of information technology. “You can’t filter out everything anyway, and what may be a concern for one group may not be a concern for another. Some may not be worried about pornography but about racist or inflammatory information, and how do you filter that?

“And even if we did try to filter, you can be sued for that.”

At present, the American Library Assn. is withholding a formal position on filtering until the U.S. Supreme Court defines the Internet’s First Amendment status. But filtering is roundly criticized, either because it filters out too much or too little.

Most surfers browse the Internet using the free search programs found on the Internet itself. Type in one or a series of words and the programs search Internet sites for those words in their titles or descriptions.

Early filter programs simply blocked access to sites containing certain words--sex, for example--and made no other distinctions. That meant children could not connect to the Internet’s “Decadence Phone Sex Directory” but were also barred from research on Sussex, sextants and sextuplets.

Newer filter programs depend on lists of sites evaluators have found to be objectionable, but in its May issue, Consumer Reports said the programs are far from perfect. “Our conclusion was that you couldn’t use one of these things and feel certain the child would not be able to go to adult sites,” says senior editor Jeffrey Fox.

“If I were a parent, I would be very concerned,” says Suad Ammar, principal librarian in Placentia. “I don’t know how children learn about the [pornography] sites, but they do.

“But it’s the parents’ responsibility. This is a new tool, and people need to be educated. We are not going to look over our patrons’ shoulders.”

More important to librarians is the credibility of Internet information, says Ron Hayden, director of library services in Huntington Beach. “There’s so much crap on the Internet, stuff that’s just worthless. . . . Cyberspace is so new and so unpredictable and uncontrollable, it’s really made some of us, me included, step back and rethink.”

But it’s definitely worth the trouble, he says. “It’s here to stay. It has improved so much since I started looking at it a year ago.”

“I constantly tell people we should look at the wonderful stuff you can get on the Internet and stop dwelling on things controversial,” Bartel says.

“Libraries have traditionally tried to outreach, especially to young people, and having computers and the Internet has been a tremendous draw for this age group. We’ve been able to reach them where we haven’t been able to before.”

“I’ve heard the Internet called the devil incarnate and the savior of civilization,” Hayden says. “Neither is true.

“But libraries must have it. It’s here, and it’s going to be used even more.”

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Web Sites Offer Insight on Issues

For information about and discussion of Internet issues for libraries, try these World Wide Web sites:

American Civil Liberties Union: www.aclu.org

American Library Assn.: www.ala.org

California State Library InFoPeople program: www.lib.berkeley.edu:8000

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, “Child Safety on the Information Highway”: www.missingkids.org/childsafety.html

Search the Internet for: Communications Decency Act