There seems to be an increased clash between our concern for the welfare of our children and ready and reasonable access to information for the public.  (Here’s another of the recent efforts in the US to enforce filters on public Internet access.  Thank you Shifted Librarian.)  On the surface you’d think that there is no competition here:  no amount of information is important enough to allow anyone, let alone children, to be harmed in some way.  But that would be like saying that medical research is not important enough to allow harm to come to any living thing.  If the research is important enough and the harm is small or incredibly unlikely then we make that trade-off all the time:  clinical trials, lab testing, even funding and devotion to work involves “harm” that is acceptable for the value that the research has.  It’s similar in the case of filtering.

Of course, there’s no reason to think that access to just any information for any cause would justify placing a child in harm’s way but is this really the case in libraries providing Internet access to the public.  Are we saying that it’s worth creating major barriers to citizens becoming more knowledgeable about government to prevent Johnny from seeing a breast a month before he’s legally allowed to see one?  Does it make sense to think that because Sally might read a “bad word” that she’s probably heard from TV, her friends or even her parents, we should make it more difficult for her grandmother to find out about important personal health issues?  You might think, “What do these things have in common?  Why would filtering sexual content prevent access to political information?  How does censoring graphic language affect medical sites?”

1. Filters aren’t perfect.  Sometimes the most innocent sites are filtered out in the name of blocking sex, violence, swearing, etc. either because the systems used are biased, flawed, or misused or because of the inherent difficulty in getting a machine to understand language, images, and other forms of information.  And of course, they let through lots of the very thing they are trying to block, which tends to make people make the filter block more, “just in case”.
2. Information seeking is not a passion most people have.  I am a librarian but I know most people don’t feel the same way I do about tracking down the answer to a question or delving deep into a database to see what I can learn about it.  Any kind of system set up to ensure that only qualified adults are given free access to the computers and the Internet will require some sort of effort on the part of the adult.  It’s hard enough to get people to realize that they need information, that it’s online, that they can find it themselves, or that the library can help with that need.  Asking them to do just one more thing to get to that information means that some people (too often MANY people) will just not bother.

And connected to the idea of filtering is the unfortunate outcome of simple misrepresentation of the information environment.  Filters don’t just block your view of certain things.  They very often simply scoop the offensive bit right out of your universe, without you even knowing something is missing.  If you don’t know something is missing, how can you know whether it was filtered appropriately or not?  Because they make mistakes and because they create barriers to finding information, filters can be systematically removing things from your view that might otherwise be useful or interesting to you.

Why is this on this blog about perceptions of libraries and librarians?  A couple reasons.  This is fundamentally about the perception people have about information and information technology, which are both central to librarianship.  More and more people are learning the value of knowledge, either for itself or for what it brings, but not everyone.  Too many people either think they already “know” everything or feel that “learnin’s is fer brainiacs”.  But also, I don’t think a lot of regular people (read “non-librarians” LOL)  see how librarians and libraries work hard to protect not only the information in this world but everyone’s right to get to it.  Librarianship is in the political sphere, whether you know it or not, trying to make sure that you and your children will be able to benefit from the knowledge and wisdom this world has to offer, that this central educational resource, information, is not harmed or destroyed by missteps of government.