WEB FILTERS AT LIBRARIES ARE OVERDUE

Ionce wrote that "librarians are indeed the unac knowl edgedlegislators of the universe," and I meant it. Their pay stinks, theirworking conditions are worse than at the post office, but they bringthe world to us.

Now librarians are caught up in a dramatic First Amendmentimbroglio over the recently adopted Children's Internet ProtectionAct. The case, US v. American Library Association et al., hasreached the Supreme Court, with the ALA and the American CivilLiberties Union aligned against the government. The government'sposition is: We provide $200 million annually to public libraries forcomputer-related programs. As a condition of this aid, we demand thatyou filter out Internet pornography, especially for juvenile users.

The ALA and ACLU oppose the law on more or less classic FirstAmendment grounds, arguing that libraries' Internet terminals are"public forums" where the government may not restrict speech. Theyfeel strongly that filters or "blocking" technologies end up weedingout legitimate sites - e.g., the Flesh Public Library in Piqua, Ohio -along with the illegal child pornography and the garden-variety smutclogging up the Internet.

Well, we're all against censorship - or are we? While the ACLUand the usual band of First Amendment zealots are demanding let-it-all-hang-out Internet access in libraries, some resistance has arisenfrom an unexpected constituency: librarians. In Minneapolis lastweek, 12 librarians sued their employer in federal court, chargingthat the library's three-year-old Internet sites displayed "virtuallyevery imaginable kind of human sexual conduct," contributing to an"intimidating, hostile and offensive workplace." "We were living inhell, and they were unwilling to acknowledge the problem," plaintiffWendy Adamson told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In Toronto - admittedly a city that won't be affected by theSupreme Court's decision - a group of unruly teenagers chased alibrarian out of her building when she shut off their Internet pornconnection.

A police officer told The Toronto Sun that teenagers consider thelibrary better than an amusement arcade because the latter doesn'tallow them free, unfettered access to all kinds of pornography.

When writer Chris Rodell interviewed librarians for a columnposted on the literary website mobylives.com, none wanted to questionthe ALA/ACLU First Amendment party line, at least not forattribution. "This is happening in libraries all across the country,"one unidentified librarian told Rodell. "Some of these children telltheir parents, `Mom, I'm going to the library,' and the parents feelproud. But then some of these same kids and many adults will spendhours watching pornographic web sites right out in the open. It'svery upsetting to some of our older librarians. But it's a FirstAmendment issue and there's not a thing we can do about it."

That's not quite true. We can do several things. One is to acceptthe limitations of the much-derided filters and use them anyway. Thegovernment argues, convincingly, that when libraries use the filters,"They are simply declining to put on their computer screens the samecontent they have traditionally excluded from their bookshelves." Asecond possibility is the so-called "Boston solution," adoptedseveral years ago in Copley Square by the nation's oldest publiclibrary.

At the Boston Public Library, president Bernard Margolis explains, the children's and teenagers' rooms have Internetterminals that filter out porn. The grown-ups use different computersand can visit the Flesh Public Library or order the Flesh Gordonvideo. If a person under 18 wants access to the wider world of Webwonders, he or she can get it, with signed permission from a parent."That puts the decision with the parent, where it belongs, and notwith us," Margolis says.

I know where I stand on this. I'm behind the government and I'mtired of First Amendment shilly-shallying that fills my children'sHotmail screens with dozens of porn come-ons every day. But I willdefer to Justice David Souter's eventual opinion in US v. ALA, (1)because he cares about the First Amendment in an intelligent way, and(2) because it was once said of him, correctly, that "he regardsBoston as the center of the civilized world."

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist.

His e-dress is beam@globe.com.