Information Agencies and Their Environments LIS 450

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Information Agencies and Their EnvironmentsLIS
450

• Session 9
• Intellectual Freedom

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Agenda

• Questions?
• Intellectual Freedom
• Policies
• Background
• Examples
• Discussion of articles
• Preer
• Wolkoff

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Policies

• Policy and Planning
• Policy examples
• Madison Public Library
• CCBC
• College Library

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Intellectual Freedom

• First Amendment (1 in Bill of Rights, 1791)
• Congress shall make no law respecting an
  establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
  free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom
  of speech, or of the press, or the right of the
  people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the
  Government for a redress of grievances.

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Enlightenment values

• Self-fulfillment
• Advance of knowledge
• Self-government (demo/cracy)
• Check against government corruption or excess
  (i.e. threats visualized from government)

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Library Bill of Rights

• not be excluded, denied or abridged because of
  origin, background, or views
• all points of view
• should challenge censorship, resisting abridgment
  of free expression and free access to ideas
• facilities available on an equitable basis

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Threats from the Market

• Concentration of media
• Deregulation of commercial activities
• Privatization of education (e.g. universities)
• Privatization of government information

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Self-Censorship and Labeling

• Most common form in libraries
• Avoids controversy
• Responds to consumer demand
• But not everyone wants to block reception of the
  same materials
• Labeling now combined with technological controls

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Scope of IF (ALA)http//www.ala.org/ala/abouta
la/offices/oif/ifissues/

• Too broad?
• A way of side-stepping neutrality?(What about
  substantive neutrality?)
• Other policy issues--intellectual property,
  security, privacy

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Link with Privacy

• ALA affirms that rights of privacy are necessary
  for intellectual freedom and are fundamental to
  the ethics and practice of librarianship.
• IF and privacy may go together
• IF and privacy may compete