Further to my blog entry “Internet access in public libraries and filtering” the Australian federal government has announced that free filters will be provided to all Australian families, as part of a package of measures aimed at cracking down on Internet pornography. More…..

Interestingly, it is also being imposed on the National Library of Australia, whose budget is controlled by the federal government and being offered to public libraries Australia wide. At present, only the state of Tasmania has compulsory filtering state wide, a fairly recent innovation and one that is being widely criticised. As public libraries around the country do not receive any direct funding from the federal government, they can not force filtering on them. However, they may pressure the state governments, from whom public libraries do receive some measure of funding, to in turn exert the pressure on the libraries, to install the free filtering. At this time, no-one has been able to convince me that filtering is the way to go.

The Australian Library and Information Association is supporting the federal government in all aspects of this initiative except public library filtering. More….

Elizabeth Beales has written a great paper “Librarian as Cyber-Nanny” which won the Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship 2006. This fellowship is awarded for an outstanding original paper on any aspect of librarianship by a woman librarian or female student of librarianship. Elizabeth raises some good points for both sides of the argument and is well worth looking at.

This story isn’t over yet. Only time will tell what it will mean for public library staff and users.