Armageddon for the Apostles of Access
By Karen G. Schneider
American Libraries Columnist
Director of technology for the Shenendehowa Public Library in Clifton Park, New York.
kgs@bluehighways.com
Column for March 2001
As devastating as the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) would be on the local level, the legislation, which requires libraries and schools that receive federal funding for Internet access to install filtering software, proposes an even greater threat: It may undermine decades of collective networking (in both the human and the technical sense) that have informed modern librarianship.
For decades, regional and statewide consortia have played significant roles in bringing far-flung, rural libraries online, and these efforts have shaped our values as much as our values have shaped our efforts. Being librarians—stubbornly, willfully attached to the idea that all people will have access to information, no matter where they live—when we cannot wire buildings in faraway places, we deck out a cybermobile with laptops and cellular access and drive it out to where our patrons are, from the wilds of Australia to the rolling hills of upstate New York. As a profession, we are nearly unique in the depth of our willingness and ability to reach out to everyone we serve.
Yet we could not always afford the level of telecommunications access we knew our communities needed. For many of us, technology-based expenditures have come on top of stagnant budgets and demands for other library services. The Internet has been another mouth to feed, and like all children, it turns out to be more expensive than you think it is going to be.
Then the e-rate came along. E-rate money allowed libraries with slow lines to upgrade, freed up money for more investments in technology, and helped consortia bring more libraries online. In poor areas, the e-rate can provide discounts of up to 90% on telecommunications services; even many comfortably middle-class library districts receive double-digit discounts. The paperwork is clumsy, the rules are arcane, and the system is biased toward larger systems with the resources to wade through bureaucratic minutiae; but if you qualify for discounted Internet access, it’s quite a savings.
As useful as the e-rate can be for a single library, look at Wisconsin, where a statewide e-rate program saves libraries almost $2 million, or 53%, over the state contract price—let alone what libraries would pay commercial service providers! Any library can get a DSL line for $100 a month. All told, across the nation, libraries received $65 million in e-rate discounts for year-three funding. And I haven’t even begun to discuss LSTA and ESEA funds, which are also tied to filtering in the CIPA legislation.
But there never really is a free lunch, is there? Now it appears we must filter for our supper, or go unfed.
Learning the wrong lessons
Maybe the hardest part about CIPA is that we are learning the wrong lessons.
We are learning to be suspicious of federal funding, even though other major American institutions, such as higher education, have always relied on this source of income. Major problems in our profession, such as salaries and working conditions, may never be fully addressed if we continue to be so heavily reliant on local funding. And if we take a truly giant step backward in technology funding at this cusp in the evolution of information services, our libraries may never recover, and we would soon be extinct.
We are learning that aggregating our efforts can be dangerous—or at least incredibly inconvenient. Suddenly, the fate of dozens of libraries can be in the hands of a consortium, which in most cases would rather not be making policy on behalf of their libraries in the first place. As I was asked by Eileen Palmer, deputy director for member services at Michigan’s Library Network, “Do we [the consortia] want to be the CIPA police?”
Even the nuisance factor will be daunting. Eileen continued, “What do we do if some will and some won’t?” I can’t wait to sit through those meetings. Bob Bocher, library technology consultant for the state of Wisconsin, pointed out that “from an internal management perspective the Wis e-rate application includes about 670 libraries and schools. . . . Just tracking which ones are opting out . . . will be messy at best.” Not to mention the Solomonic decisions required of libraries who, in refusing to change their policy on filtering and going with their own ISP, suddenly realize that they no longer have an Integrated Library System because theirs had been delivered over consortial IP-based networks. Catalogs . . . circulation systems . . . shared databases . . . All are held hostage by CIPA. (Did you actually discard those card catalogs, or are they in the storage shed?)
Finally, and perhaps most ironically, we—who almost alone in our commerce-crazy era have stood for the value of government services—are learning that government is not necessarily our friend. One library board member commented to me, “They’re going right over our heads and making policy in Washington.” Suddenly, it’s us versus them. When “they” of the Beltway begin touting the benefits of national information infrastructures, next-generation Internet, or any other major and collective project, we may well react with suspicion if not cynicism. “And what will they tie that to,” I hear librarians ask.
Your library may choose to provide filtered access alongside unfiltered access; that is your decision. Your neighbor in the next district may choose otherwise. Respect for our mutual decisions is part of our culture. But it is cruel and unfair—not to mention demeaning and patronizing—for the federal government to bypass the hard work we have put in to providing Internet access for our communities and dictate censored access for all.
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