Category: Intellectual Freedom Issues
Lynda’s Privacy Problem
By: guest contributor Samantha Lee – LyndaLibrary, soon to be LinkedIn Learning, is planning a platform update that would require library patrons to create LinkedIn accounts to access the resources, rightly prompting privacy concerns amongst Connecticut librarians. By calling attention to the privacy concerns on Lynda/LinkedIn, librarians can help to create a safer environment for patrons and their privacy.
Keeping Archives Active: Access to the Past for a More Peaceful Future
By preserving stories from all sides, supporting efforts to teach history in a holistic fashion, and honoring multiple perspectives, vibrant libraries and archives can be an important ingredient in moving beyond sectarianism.
Intellectual Freedom for the Incarcerated
The incarcerated are an oft-forgotten demographic, but this quality shouldn’t dampen their fundamental human-rights. For US prisoners, access to library materials is wrought with roadblocks built by a tumultuous past.
Academe, Heal Thyself: Reflections on the Free Speech Executive Order Discussion at ACRL
By: guest contributor Sarah Hartman-Caverly – The true threats to intellectual freedom on college and university campuses cannot be solved by outside intervention – most especially not by state intervention. In this post, Hartman-Caverly extends criticism of the recent Executive Order on free inquiry by challenging its emphasis on learner data tracking, and questions whether intellectual freedom can meaningfully exist without intellectual privacy.
When Local Newspapers Close, What Can Libraries Do?
When the local newspaper closed in Weare, New Hampshire, the community lost its local news source. In stepped Mike Sullivan, library director of the Weare Public Library.
OIF, ODLOS, and VLA Respond to Hollins University’s Removal of Yearbooks
We extend our full support to the staff of Wyndham Robertson Library and the Working Group on Slavery and its Contemporary Legacies at Hollins University, who have demonstrated their commitment to preserving full access to the library’s collections and upholding their professional ethics and values.
Why I am Keeping Seuss Books
By: guest contributor Carole Soden; “I fully understand why some libraries feel more comfortable not using Dr. Seuss books but I feel there is also another approach.”
To Exhibit or Not to Exhibit? Privacy Concerns and Library Exhibits
These exhibits are yet another reminder that so much of our private lives are now very public in a way that they were not a few decades ago.
Schenck v. United States, 100 years later
Sometimes the voices we most need to hear are voices that the government would rather silence.
The Citizenship Question & the 2020 Census
The citizenship question on the 2020 census is an intellectual freedom issue that affects the accuracy of government data and impacts the historic record.