Becoming digital: policy implications for library youth services - Children and the Digital Library

The focus on children's interaction with networked information has come from outside the library and information science field, primarily from those who seek to protect young people from sexually explicit materials and from contacts with adult sexual predators. There is some danger, therefore, that other policy issues relevant to libraries serving young people may be overlooked or misrepresented. This article is intended to provide a framework for integrating the policy implications for youth services into the larger discussion on digital libraries. The author assumes that library services for youth are, in fact, becoming digital and argues for the development of policies that will meet the needs and best interests of children and young adults during this transitional period.

Thinking about Policy

Policy is about choice. Policies are deliberate choices or decisions that guide actions and influence outcomes. Foreign policy guides a country's relationships with the outside world. Economic policy attempts to guide the complex exchange of goods and currency in a society. National information policy is the growing arena represented by such recent legislation as the Communications Decency Act and the Clinton Administration's initiative's to connect schools and libraries to an Information Superhighway. Organizations also have policies which guide such matters as personnel decisions and interactions with the media. Libraries typically have internal policies which guide collection development and service priorities. Library policies are traditionally informed by principles of intellectual freedom, as defined by the American Library Association's Bill of Rights and by their own tacit or implicit mission statement. In other words, choices made by library decision-makers are presumed to facilitate, rather than restrict, access to information and to advance the library's ability to serve its clients.

The overarching criteria for decisions made in the process of digitizing libraries intended for young people then should be: (1) Does this policy facilitate access to information by children and young adults? and (2) Does this policy enable the library to provide better service to children and young adults?

Digital Libraries and Children's Access to Information: The Intellectual

Freedom Issues

The American Library Association has adopted an interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights that relates specifically to access to electronic information, services, and networks (American Library Association, 1996). This document reiterates ALA's long-standing commitment to the rights of minors to information. In language which has become customary in library intellectual freedom documents, concerned parents and legal guardians are advised of their responsibility to provide guidance only to their own children. Some youth advocates may feel that libraries have an obligation to ensure that even parents do not limit children's access to information; ALA has resisted taking this more radical position and stops merely at the point of libraries acting in loco parentis. The potential for accessing pornographic materials or for adults to obtain personal information about children through the Internet has, however, raised a firestorm of concerns, policy responses, and technical innovations designed to restrict children's access to networked information.