Policies?
FIRST, examine your existing policies! They will govern many elements of Internet acess, like age limits on users (if any), charges for services, time of use. Unanswered questions may speak more to the state of your current institutional policies, than to the nature of the Internet.
SECOND, understand the policies under which your professionals practice. For librarians, these are the policies of the American Library Association. For most teachers, the National Education Association or American Federation of Teachers provide professional guidelines and ethics. A librarian, for example, may not install filtering software on an Internet account. It is up to you, the Board member, to decide what your community standard dictates.
THIRD, look to those who do this! There are policy statements in place at schools and libraries across the United States. See if any of them work for you and your community. Many school districts or communities use acceptable use policies (AUP), contracts which are signed by young people, their parents, and sometimes staff..

Security?
it is possible to disable access to both your machines and to portions of the Internet. Public access does not inevitably mean patrons or students will hack your system or mail bomb remote users. "Kiosk mode" is the term used now for how to set up an Internet browser for public use. Market demand is also bringing new software along quickly. You can provide equity of access and provide institutional protection both physically and philosophically.

The Smut
Yes, it is out there. No, it is not easy to get. For the young person you may be worried about it would require both time and supporting software to get and view pictures, sound or movie files. It also takes a long time to get to most of these sites and through one to three screens of warnings and agreements. A student trying to get to Penthouse gets nothing if he/she doesn't know the exact address. Hustler charges $5.99 a minute for their material. It takes two minutes on a 336 baud modem to get three levels down to naked anything in the Playboy site and then the user is required to have a subscription. Young people would need much unsupervised time and computers out of the public view to to get to the dirt.

Librarians concerns about filters are that they filter out the good and useful, too. If filtering software blocks the word "breast" what happens to the person looking for breast cancer treatment information? The features and capabilities of filters are being examined by librarians around the country.

The luring and mailing of "dirty pictures" that get much media coverage are generally found in "chat" situations and/or where the victim has e-mail, both of which may be disallowed in your institutional setting. You can choose not to install web chat software, for example. The discussion that so inflamed Congress and the country was based on a report which has since been called into serious question.. The Electronic Freedom Foundation offers a review of the legislative initiatives to control the Internet including, in their archives, a discussion of filters and rating schemes.

The Violence
The Anarchist Cookbook was a published volume, available on some library shelves, long before it was available electronically. It was pulled from at least three Internet sites in the US and Europe within hours of the Oklahoma City bombing by responsible site administrators. The Jolly Roger presents a difficulty for young people, who never seem to remember or know how to spell the name of the thing they are looking for. (Spelling counts, on the Internet, a great deterrent in its own right!) In each case, in my area, of a young person passing a disk with supposed bomb information to someone in school, the information came from the unsupervised and unlimited access of a home account. Your policy statements can reiterate clearly what is parental responsibility and whether or to what extent you allow up- or downloading of materials through your account. Your current cardholder agreements or district standards may already cover much of this.

The Costs
1. Your account. Talk to providers in your area; some are prepared to support public institutions with reduced rates. Are you prepared, equally, to acknowledge their support? What is your policy on corporate gifts to the institution, which a reduced rate or free account surely is. Would a school allow a provider to send brochures home with students if the provider donated services to the district.? What do your policies allow you to accept?

2. Your telephone line and time. Stay on top of developments in this area. Deregulation and cable modems may give you a range of choices. Is ISDN available? Frame relay? Grants to public institutions? Call your state Board of Public Utilties and see what discount they expect to obtain from telephone companies for schools and libraries under FCC regulations. You want to know this before you talk to the phone company in your area. Check with your cable company and to all telephone companies who serve your area. Most have web sites:

• Ameritech
• Bell Atlantic
  
• MCI
  
• Bellsouth
  
• Sprint
  
• PacBell
  
• NYNEX

3. Equipment. If you are starting new get at least a single PC with 16 MB memory, a 90 mhz processor and 28.8 modem for Internet access. If you plan to network your access across several machines, plan for that now. If necessary, develop a staged budget for access and equipment and share it with your Friends' group or PTA/PTO. Talk to your state (county, provincial) library and/or department of education to see what long range plans are in place and how your institution should relate to those.
Do not buy "cheap" or remaindered. False economies end by being expensive in the long run. A high speed modem pays for itself in weeks, in reduced time online and improved access. Read Karen Scheider's Internet Access Cookbook (Neal Schuman, 1996. for a discussion of what you can do with what you have or may be given.

What's the Point?
The smaller your institution and budget, the more you will get from Internet access. You can search US law online, get students current information on shuttle flights, find the latest US National Institute of Health information on cancer treatments for patrons. There is an entire social studies curriculum to be made just at the Institute for Global Communication. We have found overseas information for local businesses and helped patrons determine the costs of accepting a job in another city, on the Internet. After three years of working with a county population of over 400,000 we now write electronic bibliographies, pointing people to the information we find they most often need for their life choices. Our minimum staff competency standards derive from the Internet guidance patrons have needed and now expect from our librarians. If nothing else existed, the US government information on the Internet alone would justify an Internet account in any US school or public library.

Whose Decision?
Your community empowered you to make decisions for it when you were elected or appointed. But, if you feel the Internet is problematic, ask your community. It is, ultimately, their decision, their money. Do a survey, but think about combining it with a trial demonstration period so they understand clearly what it is they are judging. The consent of the governed is a not insignificant element in our public institutions.

• Do you think the school/library should offer Internet access?
• Do you have Internet access at home?
• Do you have concerns about Internet access in a public institution? What are they?
• Have you used the Internet at all?
• Do you think it is part of the school/library role to teach electronic information access and use?
• Do you think our young people will need Internet skills as part of their working future?

There are few unanswerable questions. Enough institutions are providing Internet access that you or your librarian can get answers from their experiences. But, on balance, there is one question: do you or do you not give the people in your charge access to the world?

Good luck. Drop me a note if I can help with anything.