Libraries Without Walls

    The Internet changed things for librarians - that much is no surprise. But some of the ways in which things have changed are shocking. Most of the focus on student use of the Internet in school libraries has been on protecting students from accidental exposure to pornography, or from Internet predators. But what about the ways in which students themselves use cyberspace? Several recent court cases have arisen from students using their personal blogs to malign or even threaten violence against teachers and administrators. And the courts have given widely different opinions on the authority of schools to punish such behavior when it occurs outside of school, including two completely opposite opinions from two different panels of the same Third District Court of Appeals, issued on the same day in two nearly identical cases.

    All of the cases involved either YouTube or Facebook, and most school district filters block these and other social networking and blogging sites (I can't even access my own personal blog from my classroom). But students are notoriously savvy about getting around and through filters. And e-mail programs are generally not blocked. Nothing prevents a student from creating a slide show or other document on a library computer, e-mailing it to him-or-herself, and posting it to a blog or other site from home. What possible liability would the teacher-librarian bear in such a case? (Note - I don't have any answers for this what-if scenario, I just find it very disturbing.) How closely is one supposed to monitor computer usage? What can a TL rightfully stop a student from doing, without risking violating the student's First Amendment rights? We are already extremely restricted on what we can say in the classroom - how much more will be added on?

References:
Simpson, M. (2010). Cyberspeak no evil. NEAToday, 29(2), 20.