The Library mission –developed by Board of Trustees working in conjunction with library staff and members of the community—states that the Amherst Town Library “strives to provide all community residents—both young and old—with materials and services for their information, educational and entertainment needs.”

The strain of support for intellectual freedom runs through all library policies including the materials selection policy and the electronic media policy.

Positive approach

• ATL networks are designed to give patrons the ability to search for the information which they need using the most effective tools available.
• We purchase databases of information from traditionally trusted sources such as periodicals and government publishers.
• Reference staff provides many bookmarks to help patrons move quickly to well tested sites on the Internet.
• The Amherst Town Library web site also directs users quickly to carefully selected sites on many subjects.
• We conduct workshops to teach patrons to search effectively and to evaluate sources.
• We try to protect the privacy of patrons by positioning of computer screens so that they do not face directly into traffic areas of the library and by providing areas where patrons can discretely ask librarians for help.

In a special effort to protect patrons, we do two things:

• We clear all search history from the browsers after each person leaves a computer so that the next patron will not inadvertently stumble across material which may not be appropriate for him or her.
• The Amherst Town Library Children’s Page offers a safe alternative to young people by offering a professionally selected subset of the Internet with good sites for both research and entertainment. The two networked computers in the children’s room operate in the kiosk mode so that children can move easily around the sites on the Children’s Page without going out onto the World Wide Web as a whole.

As there are serious questions about how effective Internet filters can be considering the complexity of human knowledge, we consider our more positive approach to safe use of the Internet to be a better method of serving our patrons’ diverse needs.

The Library Director will be happy to speak further with any Amherst citizen about ATL Internet access concerns.

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