Libraries for Children and Young Adults
Section
Policy Statement:
‘Internet and Children’s Library Services’
Members of the Standing Committees of the IFLA Libraries for
Children and Young Adults Section and the Reading Section, gathered in
Durban for the annual World Library and Information Congress 2007,
accepted the following Statement:
- The Statement is built on the foundation of the
IFLA/UNESCO Internet
Manifesto Guidelines.
- According to the Rights of the Child, art. 13
and 17, stated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
(1989), children shall have freedom to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either
orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any
other media of the child's choice.
- The child has access to information and
material from a diversity of cultural, national and international
sources, especially those aimed at the promotion of his or her
social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental
health.
- Therefore libraries shall not use filtering on
Internet.
- Libraries should have a clear policy on use of
the Internet by children and young adults, and this policy should
be explained to parents and caretakers when children first begin to
use the facilities in the library.
- Although libraries do not use filtering, their
policy should be that some issues are not allowed in the library;
e.g. libraries do not allow patrons (children nor adults) to use
internet for porn, violence, discrimination etc. according to the
legislation in each country.
- The public library should promote appropriate
guidelines for the protection of the child from information and
material injurious to his or her well-being, related to his/her
ages.
- Internet offers the libraries the opportunity
to put themselves as an information mediator for children.
Children’s library services should make use of that
opportunity.
- Media-education, e.g. learning how to use
Internet and how to interpret the information that they get via
Internet for children, their parents and their carers, is one of
the mean goals of the library and responsibility of librarians.
- The public library should offer free access and
use of Internet to children (similar to the traditional information
sources as encyclopaedia, dictionaries etc.) Equipment and software
must be accessible to all children, regardless of disabilities.
- Every children’s librarian should know
the way on the digital highway as well as in children’s
literature.
To summarize:
- No filtering (because it doesn't work properly,
it says to young people that they are not worth of trust and that
someone from outside is responsible for what they are doing)...
- but yes, we also offer a selection of good quality sources.
- No censorship...
- but yes, good media-education of all - librarians, teachers,
parents and children.
- Yes protection...
- but the main responsibility lies with the parents.
- Finding a new ways... work together with
parents, children and librarians to find a new ways of co-operation
and to set up common rules.
This statement is offered as a recommendation to the staff of
public libraries and several other organisations. It will also be
published in the SCL and Reading Newsletters.
