Social Networking Software Locked Down/Filtered Out

Pretty much most all the social software is blocked in my school district, Knox County, TN. The filtering comes from a state-level technology service, ENA. No IM, client or web-based, no Flickr, you tube, google images, and so on. While all the blocking comes from the software, I'm sure there are some that have been specifically blocked. My first guess of a reason, in terms of public schools, would be the potential legal liabilities.

Hi, I work in a public library in the UK and a lot of the social sites are blocked here. I can access Bloglines and Flickr but cannot access MySpace, Meebo, any chat software and YouTube. "Personal web sites" are also blocked which seems quite random as I can access my own blog but not the excellent Tame the Web blog :O( Our IT folk did try to unblock YouTube recently but something went very wrong with the filtering software and we couldn't even access the British Library website! I believe some of the problem is being on the same network as the local schools and having to put quite general filtering in place. There also seems to be a lot of anti-chat feeling in the UK and I find it quite strange that our library users can IM a librarian but not when they're in the library!!

Sarah

PS Good luck with the course everyone!

Dell Bayer    Technical Library, Sandia National Labs   jabayer@sandia.gov

The Meebo site and external IM sites are blocked at my workplace (Sandia National Labs Technical Library).  This is due to security issues -- quite significant here.   Our IT department was most gracious and accomodating by fixing special access for me for this course.  I have yet to actually use it, but we'll see...

In my day job at a k12 school, we can't use instant messaging because "IMing" became the most important thing for students to do. If a student was in front of a computer, they had thier im screen open and rarely got any school work started, much less finished. We lost access to music downloads when our whole system was slowed down by the students use. We lost access to ebay when a teacher went overboard and was ignoring classes to close deals! We decided against myspace when parents got wind of the fact that kids could access it, and then the parents found out what thier children were writing... Facebook is out, too, but we do have Google image search because the students use it responsibly to find pictures to use in reports and presentations. (appropriately acknowledged, most of the time!)

At the college, there are no blocks. I do spend time chasing high schoolers off the college machines, but otherwise haven't had any problems.

I attended a wonderful conference on Technology in Education this fall at which the main speaker made a list of the most popular methods of communication the students used in high school and then pointed out that most schools block those technologies and we need to start adapting or we're going to lose our students.

Holly Ristau, Librarian

Mark Warren Memorial Library

White Earth Tribal and Community College

Mahnomen, Minnesota

You raise a really important point here, and illustrate yet another way in which institutions are using the wrong tool (censorship) to address what they see as a problem. Filtering is still censorship; furthermore, limiting access to these tools is cutting patrons off from new information sources, and cutting libraries off from patrons...

Seems like we need to educate our decision makers internally and advocate for smarter responses to social technologies...?

Shireen Deboo, Librarian

South Seattle Community College

In Beaufort we can access all of these except 2nd Life as there are legit security concerns. As our library system is connected through the county, we have a firewall setup unlike other public libraries that can cause blocks that necessitate our IT man working with county tech per each issue. Because our director/staff is very pro 2.0, our IT man has been able to update our public computers with the necessary software for our patrons to access their favorite social software sites. (BTW:Firefox was a must to use in conjunction with My Space or Facebook.) Part of this drive came from the patrons need and from the staff using these social software tools like Meebo for our Reference IM

In addition, a list of must have tools for every public and staff computer was comprised and implemented through the system to get our staff to start playing with this software.

Rachel S. Kingcade

Hi All,

At our private high school which accesses the internet via HCCA, an information technology center for Hamilton and Clermont Counties, OH, there is a filter in place call BESS. Our own IT Dept. can also block selected sites. AIM, AIM Express, Meebo, MySpace are all blocked. I was given an override so I can participate in this course, however.

One rationale seems to be safety. Students should be protected from predators and those who would defame others in the school community which happens from time to time. The other consideration is that students should be actively engaged in school work during the school day. Gaming, chatting, instant messaging, sociailizing may all be done at home. The sizeable technology investment is to advance learning and school work. Teachers do request students blog for courses and some access wikis. K-12 schools seem less open to social software tools than academic libraries, it would seem at present. Perhaps in part because high school students can be easily distracted...

This is an interesting topic of discussion. No sites are banned at my academic library but there are practical problems that stand in our way. For instance, we cannot download any programs so we can't set up IM through aol or whatever. However, meebo works so I can do that. IT does monitor web site usage so there is the practical problem of having workplace usage of IM and sites like myspace and facebook misunderstood. The root of the problem for us is that IT has little interaction with or understanding of the work of the library. They would like to treat us as just another office and don't usually understand why that doesn't work for us.

Hi, I'm a heavy duty lurker around here and I just wanted to add my 2 cents.
I think it is really a crying shame that we tend to attack (and ban or filter) the technology rather than tackle the greater issues of behavior and education when it comes to making appropriate use of the tools. Of course it is way easier to forbid IMing in libraries and schools than it is to tackle educating students and others to use the tools in an appropriate and safe fashion, but I think that's where our goals in terms of our overall mission need to lie.
In the public libraries of our large consortium it is not uncommon for a wide variety of social networking sites to be completely banned in response to the fears of a public that has little or no knowledge about how those tools are used. I just strongly disagree that the response to their concerns should consist mainly of banning the technology. Especially when the technology is banned "to protect teenagers..." What does this mean for us non-teenagers who use social networking as an important part of both our personal and professional lives?? And what does it teach the teenagers about using these tools?
I just think the focus needs to be on literacy. A big job, yes, but it should be comforting to all of theose librarians whining about Google destroying their job security. :)