San José City Council Defers Library-Filter Mandate
A debate over the mandating of blocking software for children’s area computers at San José Public Library reached a watershed moment April 21 when the city council voted 7–3 against appropriating $90,000 to purchase filters systemwide. “We can use this money to keep our library hours longer,” Council member Tina Morrill argued before the vote, according to the April 22 San Jose Mercury News.
Library Director Jane Light told American Libraries that the council instead chose to have the library display the acceptable use policy on every public internet workstation’s login page “and have people acknowledge those every time they log onto the computer.” However, she emphasized, the council action does not preclude future consideration of installing filters. Rather, council members “deferred any consideration of filtering that would cost more than $25,000” until after San José can restore full funding for such other child-protection services as the city’s internet-crime and sex-abuse police units and school crossing guards.
The April deliberations were the latest round in a 19-month battle over appropriate internet use that reignited when City Council member Pete Constant issued a memo (PDF file) urging SJPL to adopt the internet policies and filter settings of Phoenix (Ariz.) Public Library. Constant had traveled there in May 2008, he wrote, “in an effort to further understand the filtering technology available.” When he “performed the San José Library staff test on a Phoenix library computer [that used the same software] it performed flawlessly,” he reported. A year before taking his fact-finding trip, Constant had summarily dismissed the findings of an SJPL report that blocking software tends to both allow sexually explicit material to display and to filter out appropriate sites.
The prospect of public funds becoming available for blocking software grew dimmer with the April 30 release of the city manager’s FY2010 budget proposal: According to the April 30 San José Mercury News, officials were looking to save $2 million by reducing library service from six days a week to four as part of a plan to close a $77.5-million city deficit. However, at least one pro-filter group (PDF file) seemed willing to step into the fiscal breach: NBC affiliate KNTV reported April 22 that a representative of the socially conservative Values Advocacy Council had offered during the city council meeting to donate $40,000 so the library could purchase and install filters.
Should city officials accept private funding for filters, they would still have to persuade higher-ups at San José State University to allow blocking software on children’s-area machines at its Martin Luther King Jr. Library, which is the joint-use facility that serves as both the campus library and the city’s central library. Citing a 2007 Academic Senate resolution (PDF file), SJSU Media Relations Director Pat Lopes Harris told AL that faculty “believe there should be no screening, either at King or the branches, unless we’re consulted first as part of the operating agreement.” Among the stumbling blocks she foresaw was the proposed login-screen message, which “is written in a somewhat threatening manner.” Harris conceded, however, that the library and Academic Senate could probably come to an agreement on filtering children’s workstations at the King Library since SJSU students do not use them.
Posted on May 1, 2009.