Filters to weed out porn sites on library computers

Jace Radke

Friday, Sept. 15, 2000 | 11:31 a.m.

Minors who visit a Las Vegas Clark-County Library will no longer need parental permission to use a computer in the young person's library sections.

The new freedom comes courtesy of a filtering system that will deny access to websites with pornographic or otherwise adult content. Library trustees voted 8-1 to install the filters.

"The filtering will only be on the PCs in the children's area, and will not allow access to materials we don't carry in the library as a whole or to things that we wouldn't put in the children's area," district staffer Nancy Ledeboer said. "We think of it as setting up a sidewalk on the information superhighway."

The filtering program, Websense, updates daily, placing websites into numerous categories, including adult and sexually related sites, that can then be filtered by the district. The district also has the ability to configure the filter to its specifications by adding and dropping sites at anytime, Ledeboer said.

The filter will allow children under 18 to access educational and study sites on the computers without parental permission, which was required in the past.

"Right now we have kids that come in and want to use a computer for homework, but the children's librarian can't let them because they don't have a parent's permission," Ledeboer said.

When a website is called up that is on the list to be filtered out, a window comes up on the computer explaining that the site cannot be accessed and what category the site falls into.

The system will cost the district about $10 a computer a year, or about $5,000 a year.

The filter will be installed on computers in the rest of the library, but patrons will be given a choice of whether they want to activate it, allowing for access to anything on the Internet on computers not in the children's section. Children under 18 will still need parental permission to work on computers not in the children's section.

Trustee Gloria Sturman, who questioned if the public had had enough of a chance to voice its opinion on the plan, was the only board member to vote against the filter system.

District staff is planning on publicizing the filter system and hosting a kickoff program when the system is launched Oct. 15.

District Executive Director Daniel Walters said that the filter system is not a step back, and that it is something that many other districts are instituting.

While the system will be a help to the district and its patrons, Ledeboer said, it is not foolproof.

"We can't promise that someone won't stumble upon something they find offensive, even on a filtered computer," Ledeboer said. "But we are doing everything we can."