There is a controversy, both within and outside the library community, over whether or not public libraries should provide unrestricted Internet access. The debate usually centers around the use of filtering software to block sites whose content might be considered pornographic, indecent, violent, or hate speech. On one side of the debate are those who argue that material of this nature should not be accessible in public libraries, while on the other side are those who argue that the blocking of any Constitutionally protected material is a violation of the First Amendment, In this article, I take the position that the intellectual freedom controversy addresses only part of the issue, I argue that the Internet is a resource, and that the level of service a library can provide is largely dependent on what it can afford to provide, consistent with its mandate to serve the information needs of the community.
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