Ashley Backer is not a big fan of books — she thinks they’re boring. But the 14-year-old is a daily visitor this summer to the St. Petersburg Public Library on 18th Avenue South. She uses the library’s computers to keep in touch with her classmates from Lakewood High School and to meet some of the tens of millions of users of the popular social networking Web site, MySpace.
“You get to talk to people who you may not talk to every day,” Ashley says as she sits along a bank of computers at the Johnson Branch library, which she walks to from her home nearby. She scrolls through her MySpace page, which shows flirtatious photos of other teenagers, sends messages from the site and keeps a blog. Sometime she switches to a Yahoo account to send e-mail.
At the computer next to her, 10-year-old Cheerio Humphries wears headphones and bops to the rhythm of a homemade rap video he is watching at YouTube, the video sharing Web site owned by Google that has more than 20 million users.
Nine of the library’s 16 computer stations in the library’s main room are being used by teenagers or adolescents on a recent summer day, and all are logged into MySpace or YouTube. Dozens of other young people wait in line at the library’s front desk, ready to jump into the next available computer.
That is the daily summer routine at the public library, which is evolving from a place to read books into a public Internet cafe, where children and teenagers spend hours surfing the Web. Most who come to the Johnson Branch say they don’t have a computer or Internet access at home, so the public library becomes their portal to the Internet when school is out of session.
The change in library usage is forcing the entire St. Petersburg Public Library System to redefine its role in the community, officials say.
“We do see the children using MySpace, and I have no problem with that,” says Johnson Branch manager Kathy Dort, who sees social networks like MySpace and Facebook as ways to encourage teenagers to read, write and socialize.
The Johnson Branch library is visited by some 60 children, from preschoolers to high school seniors, during busy weekdays.
The demand has become so intense that this summer the St. Petersburg Public Library System is limiting the time a person can stay on a computer.
It installed software that limits a single user’s time on each computer to 60 minutes. The limit may be extended to 90 minutes if there is not a waiting list, Dort says.
“We used to have some teenagers who came at 9 o’clock in the morning and stay until 9 o’clock at night when we close,” says Sharon Coppola, youth services coordinator for the library system. “They literally stayed all day.”
The library system also regulates use with a membership program; patrons pay $1 dollar for a library card, which that allows them to use a computer once a day or check out books.
The membership program is a standard control system used by public libraries use across the country, Dort says.
All computers at the public libraries use software that filters pornographic Web sites. Beyond that, however, the libraries don’t apply restrictions to the use of Internet sites, regardless of the age of the users.
On a recent Saturday at the Johnson Branch library, Shaquille Whitson, 14, posts a bulletin on MySpace, automatically sending it to all her “friends.” Her MySpace page shows she has 199 “friends,” some whom she knows personally from school, and some whom she has met through the Internet.
Visitors to Shaquille’s MySpace page can learn that she has 14 siblings, that she loves chocolate milkshakes, that her Zodiac sign is Aries and that she got into a fight at school last year.
“I don’t mind if people know about my life,” Shaquille says. “I love having friends.”
Library officials are aware that networking sites like MySpace have the potential to be misused. Seven convicted sex offenders with MySpace profiles were arrested earlier this month in various cities in Texas. MySpace’s official site terms says it cooperates with authorities to identify registered sex offenders and it regularly monitors misuse of the Web site.
Despite those risks, librarians say social networking sites can be an engaging tool to help get young people to use libraries, and to learn about the world, says Tina Middleton, who works on projects with the libraries through her role as St. Petersburg’s manager for Midtown economic development.
The goal of a modern library is “to make information accessible and encourage people to get information they need,” Middleton says. “If people are not using books to get what they need, we have to be able to provide them information in a different format.”
But while librarians don’t censor information, they do try to control inappropriate use of the Internet, says Dort, the Johnson Branch manager.
The monitors on the computers in the main room face the front desk, so the library staff can keep on eye on the Web sites being visited. Another 12 computers in a separate room are restricted to adult use.
But deciding what’s inappropriate can be a difficult call. The photos teenagers post on their MySpace pages include shirtless boys, and girls posed in tight jeans and short tops. And the messages they send to each other often use racy and foul language.
Public Internet sites, like libraries, often must rely on Web sites to police themselves. MySpace, for instance, requires users to be at least 14 years old, and doesn’t allow photos or text that contains nudity, violent or offensive material. If a user violates these terms, MySpace says it will delete the account.
Most of the young people using the Johnson Branch library on recent days were old enough to register on the social network. But many post fictional information as part of their profiles. And the profiles of at least three of the teens at the library claim they are over 20 years old.
Dort says the kind of socializing done through cyberspace “is not to be taken literally. It is kind of a cultural acting out. There is a lot of kidding and repartee.”
In “A Parent’s Guide to MySpace,” author Laney Dale suggests that young users of the social network should register their pages as “private,” which restricts access only to accepted “friends.” “Friends” should not be accepted without a parent’s approval, he says. And young users should never list their phone numbers, e-mail addresses or full names.
Library officials still host traditional reading programs, and hope the young people who to the libraries will find their way to books. But they know they can’t easily compete with MySpace or YouTube.
“I have to accept as a librarian and English major … that the world has changed,” Dort says. “The most popular now is electronic media which not only reaches the most people but also exposes them to positive things, like different cultures and different points of view.”
And, Dort says, “That is a good thing.”
