Filtering the Internet is not selecting materials. Selecting the World Wide Web for the library means selecting the entire resource, just as selecting Time means selecting the entire magazine. That would be censorship. It is the same with the World Wide Web. It is not an accident of terminology that the Web consists of a vast number of Web pages and that browser software permits the user to bookmark those that are interesting or useful.
Internet access is tantamount to interlibrary loan service.
This metaphor is faulty, too. Far more frequently than typing and entering URLs, surfers of the World Wide Web click on hot links for automatic access to the Web pages they wish to see. More significantly, absent financial constraints, any public library true to its function as a public forum makes available to users any constitutionally protected material, whether that means locating the material within the library itself or obtaining it elsewhere through interlibrary loan. As articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in the American Library Association case culminating in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union , the Internet represents a vast library. It is a virtual library already present within any public library that selects Internet access.