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GREENSBORO — The information revolution has officially run amok.

After 89 people were caught viewing pornography on public computers at the Central Library in the first six months of 2009, the Greensboro Public Library has taken action to make it more difficult to load porn sites.

Greensboro Library Director Sandy Neerman last week received new complaints from a homeschool parents’ network after a member said she observed a patron at the Kathleen Clay Edwards branch viewing porn on a library computer.

In that instance, the library staff did not witness the act. Library associate Dwayne Eaker said the mother, who declined a request for a newspaper interview, was so vocal in complaining to librarians that she may have “tipped off” the violator to switch screens.

Internet porn viewing is a hot enough issue on the library system’s 227 public computers that the city this year quietly purchased a device that identifies porn sites and makes them load so slowly that they are difficult to view.

At Central Library between January and July, security guards caught 89 card-carrying patrons viewing pornography on the computers. Most of the patrons caught viewing porn at the Central Library would have received an initial warning that they were violating the library’s “acceptable computer use” agreement.

Kimberly Romie, whose Piedmont Homeschoolers Association members have increasingly complained about the problem, said some parents have stopped taking their children to the library.

“We’re talking about some really hardcore, gross stuff,” said Romie, who had three such experiences at the library and has heard similar accounts from other parents.

“My total issue is that it should not be allowed. Someone cannot stand over them the whole time. A child or a mom is going to end up walking in on this. And once you see it, you’ve seen it.”

Neerman says that Internet filters do not work, and that a large part of objectionable material derives from popular social networking sites such as YouTube or Facebook, or even attachments to e-mail, which would not be practical for the library to block.

So until recently, the Greensboro system relied solely on monitoring by staff and its private security guards to combat pornography use from using bandwidth that costs taxpayers $1,200 per month.

Under the library’s policy for using its computers, anyone caught breaking the rules is told to stop.

If that warning is ignored, the penalty is a one-day ban, then a 30-day ban for the next infraction, and finally, a trespassing charge.

But even prior to the arrest last summer of a Greensboro man caught viewing child pornography on a public computer at Central Library, Neerman’s technical staff was privately testing another solution.

A device called a “bandwidth shaper” is designed to identify Web sites by categories — including pornography — and allow the library to throttle access down.

When the device finds a computer streaming video from a porn site, the bandwidth is slowed to 1 kilobit per second — slower than old-fashioned dial-up — which would cause the screen to give an error or timed-out message.

“It’s not filtering it,” said Tommy Joseph, manager of technology and reference at the library. “It’s discouraging it.”

One of the difficulties of filters, Joseph said, is that they limit access to research. For example, the explicit, now-defunct porn site whitehouse.com was just a few keystrokes away from the official site, whitehouse.gov.

Conversely, a filter could prevent someone from retrieving legitimate research detailing breast self-examination techniques, for example, or prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.

But in a background paper being prepared for the City Council, Neerman’s staff has weighed the pros, cons and costs of various filters, including the $23,000 Websense filter used at City Hall and the $8,000 Cmyphonix bandwidth management system now in place.

“There is no arrogance here about thinking we’ve solved this,” Neerman said. “It’s an institution, but also, what is the community standard, and what are they willing to support? It’s a balance you’re weighing all the time.”

Defining pornography and acceptable Internet use is just one part of that balancing act, perhaps not the most difficult. At Central Library alone between January and July, there were 102 cases of loitering reported, 72 cases of disorderly conduct and 21 trespassing cases.

For a large public building in an urban area, with more than 1.1 million visitors per year, in the midst of an economic downturn, the numbers might not appear excessive. That is, until the word “library” is mentioned.

“People’s idea of a library is of a safe place,” agreed Jennifer Worrells, library Web manager, “and we do have a strong commitment to children’s programming. But it’s not a place to drop off your children as a safe place.”

That is not lost on parents.

“It’s the panhandlers, the parking garage, and now this pornography thing. I feel OK going in there myself, but not with the children,” said Mary Mullins, mother of two grade-school students.

She frequents the Greensboro Cultural Center after school, but no longer takes her family to the Central Library.

“Bottom line? It doesn’t feel safe.”

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn @news-record.com