Library Director Resigns Over Filtering Policy in Children's Area

Staff -- School Library Journal, 1/1/1999

Jane Rustin, director of the Allegany County (MD) Library System, resigned her position after her library board voted to install filters on all children's area terminals. Rustin said she could not implement a policy that filters children's constitutionally protected access to information, a stance that is consistent with that of the American Library Association.

This past summer, a filtering plan was proposed in this southwestern Maryland town by three Cumberland, MD parents troubled by the possibility of children being exposed to Internet pornography. The parents met with Rustin, exhorting her and, later, the board to install filtering software on one computer in each of the library system's five children's rooms. The board decided to go one step further and install filtering software on all children's-area terminals, said Rustin.

Rustin views the board's decision (which ignored the recommendations of three local college librarians) as hastily conceived and "intellectually dishonest": a solution that offers only the pretense of security. While Rustin is disturbed by the thought of children being exposed to pornography, she says the remedy is to be found in heightened parental awareness and involvement, not in technologically enforced censorship that erodes children's rights. "It is important to consider [children] as citizens with rights," she said.