A Westerville, Ohio, woman asserts that her 15-year-old son has been viewing pornography for the past six months at the city library despite its use of filters. Claiming that her son had “never seen pictures like that until he was here,” Adena Wilson told the Columbus NBC affiliate WCMH-TV February 20 that minors’ Internet access at the library should be for schoolwork and “not [to] come home with porn.”
Westerville Public Library Director Don Barlow told American Libraries that he does not know what potentially inappropriate sites the teen allegedly visited since Wilson has never registered a complaint with a WPL official. Acknowledging that no filter is foolproof, Barlow explained that the library uses WebSense on a narrow setting so that it will block only materials deemed obscene by Ohio statute.
He also noted that, according to Wilson’s account, the teen was technically in violation of the library’s Internet acceptable-use policy, which prohibits the “display of sexually explicit graphics.” The policy also emphasizes that “parents must share with the library the responsibility for their children’s use of the Internet.”
Posted February 25, 2002.