The Purcell Register | Library Internet filtered

Library Internet filtered: No one feels any worse about the death of Rose Bolin than her friends at the Purcell Public Library.

Mary Sherman, who is the director of the Pioneer Library System, reports the library does have a strict Internet policy and that policy is printed below.

Purcell librarian Alicia Smith said Rose Bolin was in the library here right after school and left sometime before 3:45 p.m. on the day she was abducted.

Rose was a frequent visitor of the library, a popular place for students to congregate after school.

But, the librarian and assistants are not baby sitters and they are not the parents of the children who utilize the computers at the library.

“We can’t control the kids who come in and chat on the computers,” Mrs. Sherman told The Purcell Register.

“Our staff has given those kids a lot of love and care. They make a difference at all of our libraries.”
All known sites that are inappropriate have been blocked at the library, but Mrs. Sherman acknowledged new sites crop up that are unknown.

“And we simply cannot block sites we don’t know about,” she said. “But we really don’t know if the kids are doing their homework, playing an appropriate game, chatting with friends or what.

They can do the same thing on their cell phones with instant messaging and text messaging. The kids are savvy and can even work around blocks where many adults are not that technologically savvy.”

Mrs. Sherman also said that just by walking by a computer screen you cannot see what the students have on the screen.

“Unless you’re standing right behind them and specifically looking at the screen, you don’t know what’s on it,” she confirmed.

All of the library computers are filtered but the chat sites cannot be blocked, she reported.