Friday, September 11, 1998

08:32:38 AM

For a bi-monthly wrap up of NOLA news and information, be sure to check out NOLA Notes!

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Another Library Votes to Filter

The Santa Clara County Library Board recently voted to restrict access on children's terminals. They rejected a proposal to filter adult terminals. Read the story.

Editorial - Filtering Poll

Recently, I watched with fascination as librarians on several listservs proceeded to "get out the vote" for a USA Today survey (note - this link is the weekly poll link and will probably not point at the same question next week). The poll included four responses to the following question; "Should libraries equip their computers with Net filtering software?".

At first glance, I felt that this would be a quick finger on the pulse of where America stands on the filtering issue in libraries. Instead, with approx. 5000 respondents, it has probably become another media spin event. What I'm referring to is this process of opinion making through polling. If a public opinion poll is overly represented by factions involved in an issue, what real value does it have? I have to assume that the Pro-filter gang hit the survey as hard as librarians did, though I did not see the same grassroots efforts on Web4Lib, et al.

I also found it interesting that as the numbers began to weigh heavily in favor of "no filters", librarian folk began to breathe a sigh of relief that anti-free speechers were once again beaten back. Apparently, these folks do not recognize that the poll became a de-facto survey of librarian opinions. Of course, we did not need a survey to tell us the results of that poll.

I wonder at what point we will begin to back away from this issue and take a larger look. No, I still do not advocate filters that block (they still don't work). But, as we move forward and commercial interests are usurping traditional library roles, we need to re-examine our customer's needs. There are a myriad of new technologies and strategies for serving specialized content to specific audiences. We need to continue to evaluate the provisioning of the Internet and what our "value add" is. I had hoped this poll might tell us something about those customers. Air your own viewpoint in a NOLA  forum called Filters in Libraries

Items submitted by:
Kenneth S. Bell - Email
NOLA Regional Library System

Genealogy

Genealogy has become the second most popular hobby in our country. Regardless of size and location, libraries are often the first place where people will begin their family history search. Genealogy related web sites are increasing dramatically every day and your patrons will be asking you about online resources. Here are five worth knowing about: Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet  is awesome - it contains 28,250 links in over 70 categories from "Acadian, Cajun and Creole" to "Wills and Probate" - and she updates it almost every day. Her site has an extensive list of "How To" resources for the beginner. The US GenWeb Project has links to state web sites which in turn provides gateways to counties and genealogy/local history resources within a county. Check out your county in Ohio. The Social Security Death Index and the Ohio Historical Society's Death Certificate Index are both excellent sources of information when looking for your roots.

Negroponte and the Seniors

The April 1998 issue of the AARP Bulletin has a fascinating interview with Nicholas Negroponte, a leading authority on the digital revolution and the author of the bestselling "Being Digital" (Vantage Press, 1995). He says that the revolution is not just about receiving information differently but is about how we are going to live. "Smart machines" will change virtually every aspect of our lives - from the way we work and play to the way we communicate and relate to friends and family. Everything with microchips will be interconnected. If your refrigerator notices that you are out of milk, it can "ask" your car to remind you to pick some up on your way home. Negroponte is the director of the MIT Media Laboratory, a research center aimed at finding out how computers can help human communication, and he writes a regular column for Wired magazine.

Items submitted by:
Millie Fry - Email
NOLA Regional Library System

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