In the wake of a conference concerning kids and the Internet held in the nation's capital by Vice President Al Gore '69 last week, Cambridge parents are taking steps to ensure that their children are not exposed to indecent material in Cyberspace.

Their first stumbling block may be in sight: computer terminals, offering limitless Internet access, are scheudled to make their debut in the children's section of the Cambridge Public Library.

Library staff say they are against blocking access to certain sites. Some parents, however, are bemoaning the proposed lack of restrictions and are worried that their children could accidentally land on the darker side of the Internet.

Last week's conference in Washington, which was sponsored by several high-technology companies and public policy groups, focused on the need to prevent online pornography from reaching young Web-users.

The increasing presence of computers in schools and public libraries has heightened parental awareness of the relative ease with which children are accessing adult sites.

Libraries, as information centers, face the unique challenge of both serving and protecting young readers.

According to Susan Flannery, director of the Cambridge Public Library, new computer terminals with World Wide Web access will soon be added to the children's department at the library's main branch, located at 449 Broadway.

Cambridge school teachers are joining city parents in expressing concern about the potential for misuse of the technology.

"I think the machines should be monitored," Jackie S. Roberts said. The mother of two boys, age 10 and 11, who attend the Haggerty School, Roberts said she worries that while children may not seek explicit sites, they may arrive at them accidentally.

"Kids wander, and they don't always know what they're doing," Roberts said.

But Flannery said that in the three-and-a-half years that computers with Internet access have been available in the adult section of the main library, she has received no complaints about pornographic sites.

"Worry about pornography, while quite real, is probably overblown," said Flannery. "Most people are using the computers for research."

Library records show that 450 to 500 people use their machines every month. Susan Ciccone, a reference librarian at the main branch, said the three terminals offering Netscape are almost constantly in use.

"We have people signed up to go online all day long," Ciccone said.

Despite the popularity of the Web and the amount of national attention the issue of indecent sites has received, Flannery said she does not intend to equip the incoming children's computers with any kind of filter. Filters are commonly employed by system administrators to block access to specific sites.