The Signal, 1/10/06 - County leaders today will consider measures aimed at ensuring that children can not accidentally view pornography on computers at county libraries.

Supervisors will consider allocating $344,000 for the “Internet Protection Project,” the Los Angeles County public library system’s effort to block the accidental viewing of pornography or other unsuitable material by children on library computers.

Besides the redesign of the computer layouts of 14 county public libraries, the funding is aimed to provide more filtering services to block access to pornographic material and to replace computer monitors with ones equipped with built-in privacy screens.

The money comes from the Information Technology Fund, and its executive committee approved funding for the project in December. The aim of reorganizing the computer layouts is to ensure that kids don’t see porn on an adult computer on their way to a children’s computer.

“In some cases the layout that we had for our adult computers and the children’s computers needed to be adjusted because the kids had to go by the adult computers to get to the children’s computers,” said Nancy Mahr, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Public Library system. “There is some amount of rewiring involved and a cost associated with that.”

The changes were spurred from a complaint filed in August by Canyon Country resident Lorrie Holguin who said a computer screen at the Jo Anne Darcy Library in Canyon Country had pornography on it in plain view of her then 4-year-old child.

“I was absolutely horrified!” she wrote in a letter to Santa Clarita Councilman Cameron Smyth.
The adult computers at the Jo Anne Darcy Library were placed in a convenient area, Mahr said, “but it did involve the children going past that computer bank.”

The ITF funding is set to help the library system implement a measure introduced by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich and approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors in October, instructing county Librarian Margaret Donnellan Todd to employ “all measures necessary to block access to pornographic Web sites on computers in county public libraries.”

Some of the money also is going toward computer hardware and software.

The permanent installation of “privacy monitors with integrated privacy screens” additionally is being sought with the money.

“At the time we said that we had funding that we could use to provide privacy screens that could hook onto the computers, but we found out that they weren’t very effective because people removed them,” Mahr said. “People found them annoying; they diminished the clarity of the screen.”

But a solution was found — monitors equipped with privacy screens. They are set to replace the monitors that library patrons use and would take “a few months” to install if the funding is approved, Mahr said.

Update ...

Los Angeles County Approves $300,000 for Internet Filters

ALA, 1/13/06 - By a 3–0 vote January 10, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved spending $344,000 to install filtering software and privacy screens on all county library computers. The decision followed a study by county library officials on how to deal with sexually explicit internet material after a library computer user complained about seeing pornography on a nearby screen, the Los Angeles Daily News reported January 10.

Library spokeswoman Nancy Mahr said that the filters on adult computers would be very basic, blocking only “explicity visual sexual sites. . . . If a site has been blocked and a person needs to get it, we will lift the block on that computer for that person,” she explained.

The board of supervisors approved the plan in October, but had not yet approved funding, according to the January 11 Torrance Daily Breeze.

“This is really to protect the children, and to back up whatever actions we’ve taken with money to make sure it happens,” said Supervisor Don Knabe. “We think it’s about as good a fix as you can get based on First Amendment issues.”

See also Libraries Struggle To Keep Porn Off Computers.

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