The public libraries in the Twin Cities have had trouble with it, and now so has the job services office at Riverland Community College in Austin.

Friday, March 10, 2000

The public libraries in the Twin Cities have had trouble with it, and now so has the job services office at Riverland Community College in Austin. With what? With people using their facilities to look at pornography online.

In the past week, a Level III sex offender who had just been released into the Austin community under a supervised release program allegedly used the Internet-ready computers at the job services office at Riverland to look at some porn sites. He was arrested and faces charges of violating his release conditions.

A recent article in the Star Tribune of Minneapolis outlined the trouble that at least one library in that city has had with all sorts of folks – from teen-agers to businessmen – not just looking at porn online, but downloading pictures and stories and printing out dozens of pages at a time.

Christine McArdle-Rojo, director of the Austin Public Library, said the facility here has been remarkably – and thankfully – problem-free.

"We really haven’t seen too much of that," McArdle-Rojo said.

One reason for the lack of problems may be the location of the Internet-capable computers – they sit right behind the circulation desk area, and people must sign up for one-hour slots. The computers also are sitting out in easy view, with no way to cover what a person may be looking up.

The consequences for abusing the library’s resources to look up smut aren’t light, either, McArdle-Rojo said.

"On the first offense, you lose your rights to use the Internet on those computers for good," she said.

Which is not to say nothing untoward ever pops up on the screens at the library. Sometimes, McArdle-Rojo stressed, especially with younger folks, sites that peddle porn or just have naughty pictures will be accessed either by accident or out of mischief. These are almost universally immediately closed by the user, however.

"It’s important that people bring these episodes to our attention right away so we can do something about it," McArdle-Rojo emphasized.

Currently, the library uses no filtering software on these computers. The facility is considering installing a computer with Internet access in the children’s section, and McArdle-Rojo said the library would seriously look at putting filtering software on that one.

"The problem with that kind of thing is that most of that software is either reliant on lists or keywords," McArdle-Rojo said. "These lists of sites can’t keep up with all the new ones popping up all the time, and the ones that use keywords, well, that can make it hard for folks who want to look something up and someone has set one of the offensive words to look and filter for to something that may not always be bad. It can make it hard to look up recipes for preparing chicken breasts. Or doing research on breast cancer is another good example of that."

The library has no plans to install filtering software on the computers that already are set up for the ‘Net, McArdle-Rojo said. For one, she feels the system already in place works. For another, the library is required by law to allow unrestricted access. It can, as long as there is unrestricted access available somewhere, restrict access on some of its machines, which is why the facility is looking at installing filtering software on any computers to go into the children’s area.

McArdle-Rojo said her staff is trained to deal with the awkward and possibly confrontational situations that may arise in policing the library’s policy.