Library adheres to federal Child Internet Protection Act

I recently saw a piece on TV about cus­tomers at pub­lic library view­ing pornog­ra­phy on the library’s Inter­net com­put­ers, in plain view of any­one in the library includ­ing chil­dren. I found this account to be dis­turb­ing, as I am sure many of you would.

Please under­stand that what hap­pened at that library will not hap­pen at the Delaware County Dis­trict Library. We observe and adhere to the Child Inter­net Pro­tec­tion Act, a fed­eral law that address con­cerns about access to offen­sive con­tent on library com­put­ers, and the soft­ware we have installed fil­ters out sex­u­ally offen­sive and porno­graphic con­tent. The fil­ter­ing soft­ware that is cur­rently in place also blocks any phish­ing or hack­ing with mal­ware and spy­ware, too.

The soft­ware fil­ters all the library’s Internet-enabled com­put­ers at all loca­tions, and because it is installed on our net­work, it also fil­ters wire­less access in our build­ings. Stud­ies show, how­ever, that fil­ter­ing soft­ware is “wrong” 5 to 15 per­cent of the time, by block­ing accept­able sites and not block­ing unac­cept­able sites. As added safe­keep­ing, all of the library’s com­put­ers are posi­tioned so that staff can eas­ily see what is on the screens. If we see any­thing objec­tion­able or offen­sive, we will tell the cus­tomer to shut it down and ban them from using the com­puter for the rest of the day. If such behav­ior is repeated, we will fully bar the cus­tomer from using the library’s computers.

The com­put­ers in the children’s areas of our build­ings do not have Inter­net access at all, and the tweens’ com­put­ers are tightly restricted to only benign Inter­net sites, such as appro­pri­ate gam­ing sites.

I would also ask that if you observe some­thing on a com­puter screen that you feel is inap­pro­pri­ate for gen­eral view­ing in a library set­ting, please notify one of the librar­i­ans. We want to keep the library user friendly for you and your fam­ily, and we can always use your help.

Why are blood­hounds pre­ferred for sniff­ing out criminals?

Some­times called noses with paws accord­ing to Blood­hounds: Every­thing about Pur­chase, Care, Nutri­tion, Breed­ing, Behav­ior, and Train­ing, blood­hounds’ skills as track­ers come from the high num­ber of olfac­tory recep­tors or “scent cells” in their noses. A human’s olfac­tory mem­brane is about the size of a postage stamp and con­tains 5 mil­lion recep­tors. A large dog like a Ger­man shep­herd has a larger mem­brane and about 225 mil­lion recep­tors. The scent hounds, a group of dogs that includes fox­hounds, bea­gles, blood­hounds and other breeds, have wide, deep nasal cav­i­ties that can accom­mo­date siz­able olfac­tory mem­branes, large num­bers of odor-detecting cells and up to 300 mil­lion recep­tors, as in the case of blood­hounds. Other attrib­utes that help blood­hounds track are their droopy ears and wrinkly skin, which help col­lect odor mol­e­cules and sweep them toward the dogs’ nose. Their mus­cu­lar necks and shoul­ders let them keep their nose to the ground for long dis­tances with­out get­ting fatigued.

Where is “Down­ton Abbey” filmed?

The abbey in the tele­vi­sions show “Down­ton Abbey” is not an abbey at all — it’s a cas­tle. High­clere Cas­tle is the stand-in for Down­ton Abbey and is the home of the Earl and Count­ess of Carnar­von. High­clere Cas­tle is a coun­try house in the Jaco­bethan style, with parks designed by Capa­bil­ity Brown. The 1,000-acre estate is in the Eng­lish county of Hamp­shire, about two miles south of the bound­ary with Berk­shire, and five miles south of New­bury. I checked High­clere Castle’s web­site (highclerecastle.co.uk) for this information.

Is Truth and Con­se­quences a real town?

In 1950, the town of Hot Springs, N.M., changed its name to Truth or Con­se­quences after the radio quiz show of the same name. The World Book Ency­clo­pe­dia notes that the change was in response to the show’s host promis­ing to broad­cast from the first town that named itself after the program.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call us at 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions by vis­it­ing delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked.

Posted by Mary Santos on Feb 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.