IN THE UNITED STATED DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA

Alexandria Division

______________________________________________________	
                                                      )
MAINSTREAM LOUDOUN, INC., et al.                      )
                                                      )
                                                      )
                      Plaintiffs,                     )
                                                      )
               v.                                     )        Civ. Action No. 97-2049-A
                                                      )
                                                      )
BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LOUDOUN                      )
COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY                                 )
                                                      )
                      Defendant.                      )
                                                      )
______________________________________________________)
                                                      )
THE SAFER SEX PAGE, et. al.,                          )
                                                      )
                     Plaintiff-Intervenors,           )
                                                      )
            v.                                        )
                                                      )
BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LOUDOUN                      )
COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY                                 )
                                                      )
                     Defendant.                       )
                                                      )
______________________________________________________)

I, Judith F. Krug, declare as follows:

1. I am the Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association ("ALA") and the Executive Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation ("FTRF").

2. The American Library Association, founded in 1876, is the oldest and largest national library association in the world. Its concern spans all types of libraries: state, public, school and academic libraries; special libraries serving persons in government, commerce and industry, the arts, the armed services, hospitals, prisons, and other institutions. With a membership of libraries, librarians, library trustees, and other interested persons from every state and many countries of the world, the association is the chief advocate for the people of the United States in their search for the highest quality of library and information services. The Association maintains a close working relationship with more than 70 other library associations in the United States, Canada, and other countries, and it works closely with many other organizations concerned with education, research, cultural development, recreation, and public service. On August 31, 1997, the Association had 2,754 organization members and 53,165 personal members -- a total of 55,919.

3. The mission of the American Library Association is to provide leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all. The American Library Association is committed to protecting public access to information in all forms and to ensuring that library users in the 21st century enjoy the same free and open access to information that they do today.

4. The purposes of the FTRF are to promote and defend First Amendment rights; to foster libraries as institutions fulfilling the promise of the First Amendment for every citizen; to support the rights of libraries to include in their collections and make available to the public any work they may legally acquire; and to set legal precedent for the freedom to read on behalf of all individuals.

5. It has been the position of the ALA, throughout my thirty-year tenure as Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, that libraries may select for their collections any work they may legally acquire or, in other words, any work not previously and finally declared by a court of law to be obscene or otherwise not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Those policies extend to information available through electronic means. The principles established by ALA provide that "[i]nformation retrieved or utilized electronically should be considered constitutionally protected unless determined otherwise by a court with appropriate jurisdiction." See Access to Electronic Information, Services, and Networks: an Interpretation of the LIBRARY BILL OF RIGHTS, adopted January 24, 1996, at 3. It is also the position of the ALA that "[p]arents and legal guardians who are concerned about their children's use of electronic resources should provide guidance to their own children."

6. Internet access is essential to enable libraries to fulfill their historic mission. For years, libraries have aspired to the goal of providing information from all viewpoints and on all subjects. Limited by budget, space, and distance, few, if any, attained this goal. The Internet now provides a previously unavailable universe of information to even the smallest, poorest, most remote library and to the people it serves. It has become the single most important tool for effective delivery of library services in our time, and will only grow in importance as more and more resources become available only electronically. A library without Internet access, or whose access is filtered by some third party, will be unable to fulfill its obligation to its community.

7. Traditionally, libraries have identified and purchased material from the universe of published information to develop permanent collections from which users select items they find appropriate for themselves and their families. When users browse the Internet, they have unmediated control over the selection of material from the universe available on the Internet, both for retrieval and display. Users may find some of the information on the Internet inappropriate for themselves and their families, just as they do when browsing through the library's permanent collection. When libraries provide Internet access, it is similar to providing a subscription to a periodical or a set of encyclopedias -- the library provides the item in its entirety, not just selected issues or articles. The use of blocking software operates to arbitrarily and discriminatorily delete the electronic articles or issues, based on their content.

8. Much of the stated concern about resources available on the Internet focuses on sexually explicit material. Colloquially referred to as "pornography," these sites constitute far less than one percent of the sites available on the Internet and are not nearly so pervasive as much media coverage leads the public to believe. While there has been a high profile debate over these sites and the possibility of their availability, such prospects have not caused any significant problems in public libraries. The most vocal advocates for Internet filters are companies that produce such software and organized pressure groups that historically have sought to censor library collections. Companies that produce Internet blocking software have a direct financial interest in promoting the use of filters, and they are run primarily by computer engineers, not by librarians with professional training and a commitment to public service. The other advocates of filtering software include organized, national groups who seek to impose an ideological agenda on libraries. For years, these groups have attempted to remove from libraries material that offended their personal beliefs. The Internet is merely a new focus of their efforts, one that attracts new members, more recognition and increased donations.

9. In recent years, members of some communities have sought to ban (and succeeded in banning in some cases) classic works of literature, such as Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou. See R. Doyle, Books Challenged or Banned in 1996/97. In the last ten years, members of some communities have sought to ban works such as the Bible and the American Heritage Dictionary from library collections on the ground that those books contain material inappropriate for children. Similar controversies are beginning to erupt regarding materials available through libraries over the Internet. While some people might find the language or message of any of the texts or materials mentioned above to be "patently offensive" or "indecent," it is undeniable that the materials are of serious literary, artistic, scientific or educational value to library patrons and researchers.

10. The use of filtering software in public libraries cannot legitimately be compared to a "collections development" or "acquisition" policy, since such software functions only to delete material from the Internet as an informational resource. Such filters "select" nothing for a library's collection. Significantly, the decisions about whether to exclude materials reside in third party companies that employ secret, proprietary lists to block information to library patrons. Such firms may use exclusionary criteria that promote a political or ideological agenda, with or without the knowledge and cooperation of local officials. Even if such firms seek to apply neutral criteria, their decisions cannot conform to legal mandates or local standards. Nor can such filtering products be compared to a traditional inter-library loan policy. Such policies have never been used to impose content-based decisions on library patrons, nor have such policies ever been delegated to outside companies that use secret criteria for denying a request. The comparison of Internet filtering software to inter-library loan policies is alien to the field of library science.

11. On July 2, 1997, the ALA Council adopted a Resolution on the Use of Filtering Software in Libraries, a copy of which is attached to this Declaration. The Resolution pointed out that the Supreme Court (in Reno v. ACLU, 117 S. Ct. 2329 (1997)) recently held that Internet communications deserve the same First Amendment protection as traditional media, and that libraries that make content available on the Internet "can continue to do so with the same Constitutional protections that apply to books on libraries' shelves." Accordingly, the Resolution affirmed that the use of filtering software by libraries to block access to constitutionally protected speech violates the Library Bill of Rights.

12. In a related statement, issued on July 1, 1997, the ALA's Intellectual Freedom Committee listed some of the major problems with Internet filtering in public libraries. See ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee, Statement on Library Use of Filtering Software (July 1, 1997), a copy of which is attached. Among other problems, the statement pointed out that software filters impose content and viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, that they can impose the producer's viewpoint on the community, that the criteria used to block Internet content are vaguely defined and subjectively applied, that such filters are products of exclusion rather than selection and that blocking Internet sites using such software is antithetical to the traditional mission of libraries.

I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed on February 9, 1998.