“Food for Thought” for Librarians

This story originally appeared in the SLJ.com E-Mail Alert on Wednesday, Mar. 30, 2005

Meg McCaffrey -- School Library Journal, 3/30/2005

Two divisions of the American Library Association (ALA) have collaborated on a resource to help librarians rethink children’s Internet-access policies.

Created by the Association for Library Service to Children and the Public Library Association, Children and the Internet: Policies that Work provides updated information on recent legal issues, namely the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), E-rate funding, and filtering software.

A revision of the 1998 publication Children and the Internet: Guidelines for Developing Public Library Policy, the resource offers examples of actual library Internet-use policies, which are mindful of CIPA, but also consider the intellectual freedom rights of kids. The new publication also features helpful ALA links, along with words of wisdom from seasoned librarians.

Think of it as a brainstorming tool for library professionals, says the resource’s editor Linda Braun, a consultant with LEO: Librarians & Educators Online, a library consulting company.

Laura Schulte-Cooper, ALA’s program officer, says the resource is a work in progress. “We are hoping librarians use it as food for thought,” she says.

Children and the Internet: Policies that Work also boasts more practical advice than its predecessor, including articles about how libraries developed their policies, adds Schulte-Cooper. For example, Cynthia K. Richey, director of the Mt. Lebanon Public Library in Pittsburgh, shares the concrete steps her library took to include the local community in policy development.

Richey stresses the need to educate the public about the positive aspects of the Internet in the face of growing concern for children’s online safety. Librarians are trying to do the right thing by children and this resource will help them in that endeavor, Richey says.