Applying these principles to public libraries, we agree with the government that generally the First Amendment subjects libraries’ content-based decisions about which print materials to acquire for their collections to only rational review.  In making these decisions, public libraries are generally free to adopt collection development criteria that reflect not simply patrons’ demand for certain material, but also the library’s evaluation of the material’s quality.  See Bernard W. Bell, Filth, Filtering, and the First Amendment:  Ruminations on Public Libraries’ Use of Internet Filtering Software, 53 Fed.  Comm.  L.J. 191, 225 (2001) ("Librarians should have the discretion to decide that the library is committed to intellectual inquiry, not to the satisfaction of the full range of human desires.").  Thus, a public library’s decision to use the last $100 of its budget to purchase the complete works of Shakespeare even though more of its patrons would prefer the library to use the same amount to purchase the complete works of John Grisham, is not, in our view, subject to strict scrutiny.  Cf.  NEA v.  Finley, 524 U.S. 569 (1998) (subjecting only to rational basis review the government’s decision to award NEA grants on the basis of, inter alia, artistic excellence).  Nonetheless, we disagree with the government’s argument that public libraries’ use of Internet filters is no different, for First Amendment purposes, from the editorial discretion that they exercise when they choose to acquire certain books on the basis of librarians’ evaluation of their quality.  The central difference, in our view, is that by providing patrons with even filtered Internet access, the library permits patrons to receive speech on a virtually unlimited number of topics, from a virtually unlimited number of speakers, without attempting to restrict patrons’ access to speech that the library, in the exercise of its professional judgment, determines to be particularly valuable.  Cf.  Rosenberger v.  Rector & Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 834 (1995) (applying strict scrutiny to viewpoint-based restrictions where the state “does not itself speak or subsidize transmittal of a message it favors but instead expends funds to encourage a diversity of views from private speakers").  See generally supra Section IV.C.

In those cases upholding the government’s exercise of editorial discretion in selecting certain speech for subsidization or inclusion in a state-created forum, the state actor exercising the editorial discretion has at least reviewed the content of the speech that the forum facilitates.  Thus, in Finley the NEA examined the content of those works of art that it chose to subsidize, and in Arkansas Educational Television Commission v.  Forbes, 523 U.S. 666 (1998), the public broadcaster specifically reviewed and approved each speaker permitted to participate in the debate.  See id. at 673 ("In the case of television broadcasting, . . . broad rights of access for outside speakers