To sue or not to sue? With the new internet-access policy for area public libraries, the local American Civil Liberties Union chapter is taking a wait-and-see approach.

The policy was approved last month by the Monroe County Library System's board, after County Executive Maggie Brooks threatened to cut library funding. It requires library patrons to submit a written request if they want specific internet sites unblocked.

The Library System, which is composed of the Rochester Public Libraries and all of the town libraries in Monroe County, has its own board. So do the town libraries and the Rochester system, and those boards haven't voted on the new policy. But the Library System owns and administers the internet for all of the libraries, so its decision seems to pre-empt any decision by the individual boards.

The local ACLU opposes the policy blocking internet sites, but at a May 30 meeting, its legal committee decided to see how the local boards within the system react to the new policy, says Scott Forsyth, the group's legal counsel.

"Then we're going to test it," Forsyth said last week. The organization will make some unblocking requests and see how the library directors handle them, he said.

Board members of the Rochester Public Libraries are trying to set up a special meeting to discuss the policy, says board President John Lovenheim. If they can't, it will be discussed during the board's June 27 meeting.

The new policy was recommended by a joint internet task force appointed by the RPL and MCLS boards. Lovenheim served on that committee and supported the policy reluctantly.

When the policy was approved, MCLS board President George Wolf said unblocking decisions would be based on the library's "collections policy." That means that decisions to unblock internet sites would be based on the same criteria the library uses to buy books and magazines.

"How that's going to work in practice is something to be seen," Wolf said.

The policy contains nothing about pornography or even guidelines that would help define it, says Lovenheim. In fact, the policy doesn't touch on specific content at all. Its focus is on vaguer concepts such as the significance of subject matter, literary or artistic quality, an author's reputation, relationship to materials in the collection, and demand.

"It's really not a policy on what shouldn't be selected," says Lovenheim. "It's a policy on what should be selected."

"We don't think the collections-policy criteria will be too helpful," says Forsyth.

And Lovenheim cites a 1998 court ruling that collections policies apply when a library is deciding whether to bring the internet into the library, not to internet content. That case, Mainstream Loudon versus the Loudon County Library board of trustees, was heard in US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia.

"Although defendant is under no obligation to provide Internet access to its patrons," said the court, "it has chosen to do so and is therefore restricted by the First Amendment in the limitations it is allowed to place on patron access."

While that decision applies directly only in that court district, the case could be cited during legal arguments in other places, notes Forsyth, and it may influence other judges.

The local ACLU is also waiting for a decision on a Washington state lawsuit. There, the ACLU is suing the North Central Regional Library District over its refusal to unblock internet sites for adults.

The outcome of that case will help clarify a Supreme Court decision regarding the Children's Internet Protection Act. The Supreme Court upheld that act, but only because libraries may - or must, depending on whose interpretation you accept - provide unrestricted access to adults on request.

"We don't like what happened," Forsyth says of the Monroe County Library System's decision, "but we may live with it for a while."