One of the big issues in whether or not to filter the Internet can be phrased as "If I would never buy it for the library collection, why should I allow Internet access to it?"

(I like to ask, "If we're not getting a cut of the action, why should we permit access to Internet gambling sites?" Yes, I'm jesting.)

Actually, libraries have been providing access to the Internet since about 1988, and to the World Wide Web since its inception. You might have had to look hard to find it, it might have been limited to the staff of academic libraries, but it's been there.

It has only been since the WWW permitted simply, easy access to websites worldwide that problems have cropped up -- and not just with pornography. In the course of my job I've visited websites that featured pornography (and some of it neither shocked nor embarassed me, but simply made me mad that such exploitation of others could exist), making your explosives, "gothic", racial hatred, religious hatred, pro-terrorism, the best way to kill someone, gambling, how to cheat in school, and others.

Filters usually work on a combination of predefined URLs (playboy.com, for instance) and common words (you can probably fill in the blanks). But they can't and don't contain everything -- a filter made in the US, for instance, might not contain the Finnish word for "penis" in its list of no-no words. They are also often too inclusive, prohibiting terms such as "breast" and "breast of chicken" indiscriminately. The Children's Internet Protective Act actually says that filtering should be based on graphical images and THAT technology is still some years off. Besides, there is nothing to prevent me from creating a website dealing with, say, pornographic necrophilia, and indexing it under terms like "teddy bears" and "cooking recipes."

And oh, yeah, we have to be able to turn off the filter if requested to do so by an adult.

Big, big sigh...I was just told that the original offender is back in the building -- but he won't be using our Internet connections this time.