Michael Stephens' Tame the Web blog had a post recently about library IT departments blocking websites. He linked to a blog post from Mark Funk, President of the Medical Library Association, which noted that a survey conducted by the Social Networking Task Force showed that many Web 2.0 websites or applications were being blocked. Funk says, "If MLA wants to better connect our members using these new technologies, we need to convince IT people that not all Web 2.0 sites or applications are a frivolous waste of bandwidth or a security risk. In fact, this problem even goes beyond MLA activity, in that useful medical information is sometimes blocked."
Now, while this obviously is not an intentional limitation of freedom of speech (at least I don't think so), it certainly doesn't paint IT departments in a positive light. I'm sure they are fearful about viruses and security risks, but you can't block everything. And medical librarians especially should be allowed access to as much information as possible, in the event of a life-threatening situation.
Another thought I had was how much a staff member surrenders their freedoms in the workplace. If I work the circulation desk at a library, and the IT department blocks MySpace because I’m using it all the time and ignoring patrons, that makes sense. But some of the sites the survey listed as blocked are just strange. Del.icio.us??? They don’t want the staff to store and share important bookmarks?
Have you ever worked in a place that blocked even staff access to some websites? (I don’t mean filtering for sex, language, etc., but in more of a “preventing staff from wasting time on the computer” sense).
2 comments:
My husband works in a medical research department and sometime last year they blocked access to all websites that were not on the IU system. Their justification was that people were goofing around online (how often was that during a break though, and is it that much different from reading the daily paper?) and thus everyone lost their privileges. This angers me a bit when my husband (database manager) gets home and has to keep working. Why? Because he can't even go to Google to search for reviews of software or hardware his research group is interested in, etc. So this instead has to be done off the clock at home. I'm not sure if I really care if MySpace were blocked or what have you, as that's not essential to do one's job. And how much freedom you have is also hard to really pinpoint for me (would you bring in a Playboy and read it in your cube? No? Then why would you look at porn?) However, when it comes to the point where he can't even do his work, something is severely flawed.
It would be interesting to know what sites were being blocked. My guess is that the rationale for the blocking was to protect bandwidth. But as Ruth points out it does raise the issue of employee control and surveillance.
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