Yes, selective access is possible with some of the bootable discs. The kiosk distro specifically will only allow two things: browsing the Internet and accessing your email. It will not allow you to save anything to your local drives or any “upgrades” / installs to your machine. You can not even modify a text file using it, although you can of course read it.
For the other non-kiosk distros such as Mint Linux, as long as you do not mount your ‘Windows’ partition you will not be able to save anything to your hard drive. However if you access your local drive through the File Manager (which then mounts it) then you will be able to save files if you wish.
Have fun!
Thanks, Utilizer!