Wake County (NC) Public Library Defends MySpace Ban
RSSJoan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 06/08/2007
Although the Wake County Public Library system in Raleigh, NC, is seeing positive results since blocking MySpace.com in March, a North Carolina officer of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says it was the wrong move.
The Wake County library imposed a system-wide ban on the popular social networking site because its 19 branches had become gathering and recruitment spots for teenage gang members, says library director Tom Moore, citing staff observations and police reports. A few of the teens became involved with drug sales on the premises, and they were intimidating younger children who were just waiting their turn for the library computers—which the teens refused to give up, Moore adds.
While Moore says these problems have faded since banning MySpace with filtering software three months ago, Jennifer Rudinger, president of the ACLU in North Carolina, questions the validity of the director’s motivation.
Moore says that once librarians in the Wake County system—located in Raleigh and surrounding towns—began noticing young people bypassing filters to access sexually explicit sites, “We found they were accessing those sites through MySpace.
“Then we also found they were using MySpace in combination with gang members coming into our libraries to recruit young people,” Moore says, adding that there was also a page on MySpace with a photograph identifying a Wake County branch as the “place to go” for teens wanting to become gang members.
ACLU’s Rudinger says that MySpace can’t be entirely blamed for the libraries’ gang activity. “There are literally thousands of opportunities on the Internet for people to communicate sex, drugs, rock’n’roll and whatever else the library is concerned about," she says. She also questions Moore's ability to definitely identify gang members.
But Moore stands behind his library’s action, and particularly its results. “I know some kids are disappointed when they come in, but they have other [ways to] access [the Internet],” Moore says.
Meanwhile, he says, all the feedback he’s received has come from parents and has been positive. “As a parent said to me, ‘I was in the library and I actually saw a kid doing homework.’”
