Photo: San Jose Library

If you haven’t been trapped in a dark cave for the last 19 months, you probably know that one of the issues creating the most heat (but little light) in San Jose city government has been a proposal by Councilmember Pete Constant to install internet filters on San Jose Public Library computers. The goal of these filters would be to prevent children from being exposed to pornography at the library, and prevent library computers from being used to view obscene or harmful materials, such as child pornography.

Today San Jose Public Library director Jane Light and the library’s digital futures manager Sarah Houghton-Jan spoke this afternoon on “The filtering challenge at San Jose Public Library”. They presented their view on the debate as library professionals who will ultimately need to implement whatever the City Council decides to do.

Central to the librarians’ view is their ethics of their profession, which direct them to “preserve and enhance information access for all users.” Responding to Constant’s original 2007 proposal, Houghton-Jan and her staff studied five filtering software packages, and compared their ability to block pornographic content while admitting legitimate materials. They attempted 135 different queries, including web searches, direct URL connections, email attachments, and “new media” content such as Facebook. They found the filtering software was, on average, about 75% accurate in its blocking, with both over-blocking and under-blocking errors being common. They also found the filters could be easily circumvented by use of proxy servers or by simply choosing different search terms such as “pron” instead of “porn”. Legitimate websites with controversial words in their names, such as lesbian.org, a political awareness site, and Victims of Pornography, a victims’ assistance site, were most likely to be over-blocked.

Recently, Constant and Mayor Chuck Reed on one side, and Vicemayor Judy Chirco with two other councilmembers on the other have come out with competing proposals. The Reed-Constant proposal would put mandatory filters on computers in youth and teen areas of the library, and make filters optional in the adult areas of the library.

The competing proposal would do much the same thing, but would defer funding any implementation defer deciding on adding filters until the SJPD sexual assault and internet crimes against children units and the city crossing guards program are returned to full funding, and the recent reduction in library branch operating hours are reversed.

Director Light said that either plan is now workable within the Library’s mission, but that funding for any changes has become much more difficult since the original filtering proposal was made in 2007.

The talk was part of the Library and Information Sciences Colloquium Series. A video of the talk should appear shortly on the colloquium series website.