LM_NET: Library Media Networking
There are very legitimate reasons for allowing kids privacy when using any
library. Many kids need medical or mental health information to deal with
abuse at home or from relatives. It's their first step toward understanding
their problem before reaching out to health care professionals that can help
them cope living in difficult situations. Or the student may be conducting
research for a class that is embarrassing to admit doing or that is of deep
personal interest.
Many years ago the Vancouver, WA Public Library system was sued by a
conservative group because they wanted a list of all patrons who checked out
certain controversial books. The group was going to publish lists of names who
read these books. The court case was very close and the director made a
decision that could have landed them jail if the library had lost the case.
They deleted all historical records of books checked out by patrons and then
they stopped collecting this data. Luckily for them they won the case.
My concern is why any school district is keeping history logs of the Internet.
Not only does it waste space on the hard drive, but it opens up districts to
lawsuits like this one in New Hampshire. No one should be keeping history logs
beyond a reasonable time.
Second, in the five years my students have been on the net only five students
have been suspended from Internet usage for 1-4 weeks for minor violations (all
five students were looking at sites they found from home). That's five
students out of over 3,000 students using the Internet. To assume students
don't act responsibly under proper Internet policies is disrespectful toward
kids.
Peter G. Mohn, LMS
Snohomish Freshman Campus
Snohomish, WA
pmohn@eskimo.com
David Lininger wrote:
> At 08:38 AM 11/7/00 -0500, Nancy Keane wrote:
> >Pretty scary story out of N.H. today. The courts have ruled that a father
> >does have the right to view the Internet history logs from his children's
> >school district. He asked for the logs when the school district refused to
> >filter the Internet. He said he wants to be sure that students are not
> >accessing inappropriate sites. This has been going on quite some time but
> >the ruling came down yesterday. For more details, see:
> >http://unionleader.com/articles_show.html?article=10276
>
> I don't find this scary at all. In fact, I like it. If students knew that
> any parent in the district could access the logs, they might just think
> twice before accessing inappropriate sites. In other words, they might just
> start acting responsibly!
>
> David Lininger (KB0ZKE), LMS
> Hickory County R-1 Schools
> Rt 1, Box 838
> Urbana, MO 65767
> mailto: tss003@mail.connect.more.net
>
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