Greetings to the Phillips Library Community, and especially to our new students. One of the topics that I frequently focus on in my musings is intellectual freedom.
This freedom is highly prized and guarded by professional librarians as well as professionals in the academy. Intellectual freedom not uncommonly comes into conflict with institutions and individuals who would like to control it for purposes of power and other social strategies.
The American Library Association (ALA), the governing body for professional librarians, has an extensive history of protecting rights of intellectual freedom for us here in the US. You are likely aware that for a number of years now this freedom has been under attack, particularly as social anxieties, real or manufactured, rise.
I would like to share the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights, originally adopted in 1939, with you. It has periodically been updated, most recently in 2019. The original 1939 document reflected the ALA’s concern with rising authoritarianism and the threat of totalitarianism in the world:
The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.
I. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
II. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
V. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
VI. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.
VII. All people, regardless of origin, age, background, or views, possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use. Libraries should advocate for, educate about, and protect people’s privacy, safeguarding all library use data, including personally identifiable information.
