Category: Library Bill of Rights
Don’t Leave Students in the Dark
Banned Books Week is September 22-28, 2019. Get ready to help your students celebrate their intellectual freedom rights by creating various activities to learn more about censoring books, silencing history, restricting education, and more.
The Fine Line: Ethical and Intellectual-Freedom Implications of Charging Our Patrons
Is it unethical to charge library fines? The current landscape in public and other libraries shows that there’s no one way to handle it, but trends are moving in favor of patrons.
Library Meeting Rooms for All
The Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC) crafted a revision of the 1991 “Meeting Rooms: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights.” The revision of the interpretation was broadly inclusive and transparent and was adopted by ALA Council. The revision did not establish any new right to conduct hate speech in libraries. ALA does not endorse hate groups and does not seek to normalize hate speech.
Wedding cake warning: policies & decisions must be content neutral
Many libraries have meeting rooms or public spaces that can be used for speakers and events, and this case reinforces the importance of making content neutral decisions regarding who can use these spaces and what they can use them for. Decisions that are not content (or viewpoint) neutral risk legal problems for the library. This also highlights the importance of a clearly defined meeting room and events policy, both to guide internal decision making and to allow staff to have clear and specific viewpoint neutral policy-based reasons if they choose to deny a request to use library space.
Defend Pride at Your Library
“Beyond merely avoiding the exclusion of materials representing unorthodox or unpopular ideas, libraries should proactively seek to include an abundance of resources and programming representing the greatest possible diversity of genres, ideas, and expressions. A full commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion requires that library collections and programming reflect the broad range of viewpoints and cultures that exist in our world.”
Could Genre-based Classification Limit Intellectual Freedom?
BISAC headings have made their way into public and school libraries as well. A 2013 Knowledge Quest issue on the “Dewey Debate” provides a good intro to the “Dewey or don’t we” debate in school libraries, and many public libraries have made news for their move toward the “bookstore model,” what is often called a more patron-friendly approach than the Dewey Decimal System.
NY Backs Down on “Draconian” Censorship of Prisoners’ Right to Read
Although Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the regulation rescinded, a recent proposal and pilot program by New York to severely limit prisoners’ access to reading material raises serious question about prisoners’ right to read.
Net Neutrality and the Library Bill of Rights
Do you like having equitable and open access to whatever you want to view online? Call your congressperson. Email. Write. Send a smoke signal. Let them know you support the free exchange of ideas and information. Let them know that you support intellectual freedom. Let them know that you support net neutrality.
Why is Intellectual Freedom Important?
Intellectual freedom provides our world with innovation: new technology, cures to diseases, new ways of providing food to starving communities. Intellectual freedom enriches culture. Answering the question, “why is intellectual freedom important” is something I am continuing to explore and think about.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Sometimes the inclusion of specific titles in those displays or the themes of the displays themselves can become points of controversy in our libraries.