Dear Mr Roberts

Thank you for your enquiry below, which reached the Freedom of
Information Team.

Please note that this request has been passed to the Library service to
be dealt with and they will contact you in due course.

Your request does not need to be processed under the Freedom of
Information Act as it is a straightforward customer service enquiry.
This means that a response to your enquiry should reach you within ten
working days rather than the FOI Act's statutory 20 working days.

Yours sincerely

Lucy McConville
Information Officer

Oxfordshire County Council
Corporate Core
Freedom of Information Team
County Hall
New Road
Oxford
OX1 1ND

Tel: 01865 815448
Fax: 01865 247805

[email address]

[Oxfordshire County Council request email]
www.oxfordshire.gov.uk

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Dear Mr Roberts,

Thank you for your email, which has been forwarded to me for reply.

I can fully appreciate that there may appear to be inconsistency (or
even a contradiction) between our statement that our adult public
computers are unfiltered, and the (very low) level of filtering that you
have quite correctly identified is in place on them, and it may well be
that we need to look again at the wording of our Acceptable Use Policy
(which also forms the basis of the yellow leaflet summary version made
available in libraries). However, I would like to assure you that we are
not trying to give a false impression of freedom. The context of the
statement about filtering is the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) as a whole,
in which we are attempting to summarise a complex position in a way that
supports our users without going into lengthy explanations that few
people would read. Inevitably, simplifying the message brings its own
dangers.

The key to the AUP is the section that appears in bold at the
beginning, the most vital part of which is also on the yellow leaflet
which I believe you have read. This reads:

"In particular, you must agree that you will not create, access, copy,
store, transmit or publish any material which
 is obscene, racist, defamatory or illegal
 causes harassment or gross offence to others
 would be a breach of copyright"

The low level of filtering that we have put in place for adult computers
is only for some sites that fall within this definition, which our users
have explicitly agreed that they will not access. Our guide is, so far
as is ascertainable, the law of the land, which makes our internet
content policy the same as that for our library bookstock. To take
perhaps the most obvious example, we make every effort to block access
to child pornography. To access it would be illegal, and our users have
agreed not to access illegal sites. The same applies to sites that
incite racial hatred. However, even within the areas defined above, we
do not attempt a systematic filtering operation.

This seems to us quite different from the kind of comprehensive
filtering operation that some library authorities have put in place, in
which huge numbers of sites are blocked in order to create an
environment that can be presented as absolutely "safe" for all users. If
you state that you have filtering in place, then people expect to be in
an environment in which there is nothing that could shock anyone.
Because we genuinely believe in the freedom to access information, we
are not taking that approach. In our system, we filter out only a
proportion of those sites that our users have explicitly agreed not to
look at, and because we promote the computers as unfiltered, our users
have no source of complaint if there are in fact sites in those areas
that people do access, let alone the huge numbers of sites that are
perfectly legal but which some people may find uncomfortable. To take
one example, I have had to explain to some users that we have no right
to prevent people from looking at sites featuring nudity - or else we
would end up banning sites of all the major art galleries, apart from
anything else.

If users find that they are blocked from accessing a site that is
perfectly legitimate under our AUP, then they tend either to approach
library staff, who refer it to my team, or submit a Comments form, which
also ends up with my team. We then assess the request, and in virtually
every case, give instructions to our ICT Services to unblock the site on
all of our adult public computers. On our children's computers, which
are of course much more heavily filtered, and where we do attempt to
provide a "safe" environment for children, it is more usually the other
way around, i.e. a member of staff spots a child who has somehow managed
to get into an inappropriate site, and my team ensures that it is
blocked by our ICT Services. Blocking or unblocking usually takes place
the same day, so there should be relatively little inconvenience. So if
you are ever inconvenienced by being blocked from a site that you should
be able to access, do please report it straight away. As you now have my
email address, do feel free to come direct to me.

I hope that this explanation clarifies our policy, and explains why what
may appear to be inconsistencies in our approach do I think hang
together. Our problem is that it has taken a fairly lengthy email to
explain the ins and outs of this, and it's difficult to put this sort of
lengthy explanation into an AUP or printed leaflet.

Do please get back to me if you would like to discuss this further.

Yours sincerely,

Charles
Charles P C Pettit
Assistant County Librarian, Information Services
Social & Community Services
Oxfordshire County Council.

Community Services, Holton, Oxford OX33 1QQ
* 01865 810221
Email: [email address]

Check out www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/referenceonline
for all your information needs
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I am on annual leave on Friday 20 March. Please refer any urgent matters
to Rex Harris or Yvonne McDonald. I will be back on Monday 23 March.

Charles

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