Most of New Hampshire’s libraries chose to forgo the funds in favor of “open access to information and ideas,” as the New Hampshire Library Association’s statement on filtering urged. “Filters are ineffective,” Exeter Public Library Director Hope Godino said in the June 24 Portsmouth Herald. Instead of using software, she said, “We remind people they’re in a public place and that they should abide by the appropriate rules.”
Rob Sargent, director of the Franklin (N.H.) Public Library, once received $1,700 in e-rate funds but found the application process too involved to be worth it. “We assume people are using good judgment and exercising their own personal responsibility,” he said in the June 13 Concord Monitor.
Other libraries choosing not to filter in the past few months included the Corvallis–Benton County (Oreg.) Public Library; Virginia Beach and Portsmouth public libraries in Virginia; and the Chapel Hill (N.C.) Public Library, which decided to give up nearly $5,000 in federal funds.
Multnomah County Public Library in Portland, Oregon—whose former director Ginnie Cooper testified in favor of the American Library Association’s challenge to CIPA in March 2002—is technically not in compliance. However, current Director Molly Raphael has pitched a plan to the county that would filter Internet searches for children younger than 13 unless a parent or guardian requests otherwise, according to the June 30 Portland Oregonian.
Elsewhere, libraries that chose to comply with CIPA were installing blocking software and showing their users how it worked. Chris Kozak, media relations officer for the Toledo–Lucas County (Ohio) Public Library, said in the June 24 Toledo Blade that the filters would not disrupt the activities of users who complied with the library’s policy of refraining “from displaying profanity, sexually explicit graphics, or other sites that violate community standards.” TLCPL is spending about $10,000 for the software, in return for retaining their federal e-rate subsidy of between $70,000 and $260,000 annually.
Other libraries that began filtering recently are the Hawaii State Public Library System, Houston Public Library, Norfolk and Chesapeake public libraries in Virginia, and the Olathe (Kans.) Public Library.
Boulder Public Library, like others in Colorado, must adhere to a state law passed in May that requires filters to be in place in all public libraries by the end of the year. Library Commission head Ann Aber said in the June 1 Boulder Daily Camera, “The library’s going to comply with the law, but anything that feels like censorship gives library people a heavy heart.”
Posted July 2, 2004.