Michael Woodall slouched in a chair at the Bend Public Library this week, music from an iPod blaring in his ears as he scrolled through messages from friends on MySpace.com, a popular Web site for online communication.

”It’s just talking to friends,” said the 15-year-old, ”contacting them.”

Woodall, who loves rap, Red Bull and McDonald’s according to his MySpace profile, is one of hundreds of teenagers who access the Internet each month at libraries throughout Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson counties.

He and other teenagers like him are also at the heart of a current push among some local librarians to explain how they balance freedom of information with children’s safety – especially on MySpace. They want to tell parents that library staff don’t regularly monitor what children are viewing online.

MySpace serves as a hub for thousands of people across the world to connect with friends, create profiles and play music. It recently came under national scrutiny when 17-year-old Katherine Lester, from Michigan, flew to the Middle East to be with a man she met on the site.

Locally, a discussion of safety on the Internet started in April after the arrest of Patrick Buss, 24, of Hubbard, who allegedly propositioned two high school students online and made arrangements to meet them at a hotel in La Pine.

The two female students reported Buss to a school resource officer in March because he had been sending them sexually explicit e-mails after contacting them on MySpace, the girls said.

Initial contact with Buss was friendly, the girls told investigators from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, but discussions quickly turned to sex within a few weeks. The girls were not contacting Buss using library computers.

Detectives took Buss into custody April 27 at a La Pine motel and lodged him at the Deschutes County jail, where he was released the next day on his own recognizance.

Buss has been charged with three felonies and eight misdemeanors in the case. He is slated to enter pleas in court on Monday.

This case prompted La Pine librarians to remind parents about the dangers of unmonitored Internet use.

About 50 people a day visit the La Pine Public Library, according to branch manager Sandy Irwin.

Most come to use the computers, which have filters for pornographic and other objectionable Web sites.

But beyond the filters, there is minimal oversight of computer use.

”The library is not a baby sitter,” Irwin said. ”It’s the parents’ responsibility.”

April Witteveen, a librarian for teenagers in La Pine and Sunriver, said most of the teenagers who come to La Pine’s library use it for MySpace.

”It’s a place for teens to feel accepted,” Witteveen said. ”If we took that away, we’d lose all our teen patrons.”

But MySpace has a dark side, according to Witteveen, who checks her own MySpace account three times a day and has come across pictures of bare body parts.

Crook County Library has a similar outlook on Internet freedom and safety.

Every computer with Internet access comes with a filter, but Assistant Director Cheryl Hancock said staff don’t police the 1,500 children who go online every month at the library.

”We’re not the parents,” she said. ”It’s the parents’ responsibility and right to monitor their children’s use. All of our Internet computers are filtered, but that’s no guarantee (children will not) get into places they shouldn’t be.”

Jefferson County Library, which draws up to 900 people a month, has a different approach. Its computers do not have filters, but librarians will walk by, according to Director Sally Beesley.

”It works out the best,” she said. ”That was a decision we made – freedom of access.”

Beesley has occasionally caught children trying to quickly hide their Web sites, but she has seen few people using MySpace.

Despite these different approaches, one thing all three county libraries in Central Oregon have in common is an emphasis on parental responsibility.

”We don’t look over their shoulders,” Irwin said. ”My job as a parent is to talk to my child about the world and what’s right and wrong.”