Trina Magi - A History of ALA Policy on Intellectual Freedom: A Supplement to the Intellectual Freedom Manual

T his book is a companion volume to the American Library Associations Intellectual Freedom Manual, ninth edition. The manual provides helpful resources and current official ALA documents on intellectual freedom, and this volume provides essays about the history and development of those official documents.

In the past, earlier versions of these essays were included in the Intellectual Freedom Manual itself. In the ninth edition, the inclusion of new documents and resources in the manual made it impractical to include the historical information in the main volume. The essays remain important, however. By tracing the creation and revision of official documents on intellectual freedom, the essays provide a record of intellectual freedom concerns that librarians have faced over the last century and the American Library Associations response to those concerns. Together, the Intellectual Freedom Manual, ninth edition, and this supplement provide a look at intellectual freedom that is both historical and current, and both theoretical and practical.

In addition to a broad overview of ALAs stance on intellectual freedom, this volume provides information about the history of all the current ALA documents that are contained in the Intellectual Freedom Manual, ninth edition, including:

Four core intellectual freedom documents of the American Library Association

Twenty-one interpretations of the ALA Library Bill of Rights

One interpretation of the Code of Ethics of the American Library Association

Three ALA resolutions and policies on intellectual freedom topics

Three sets of guidelines for writing library policy developed by the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee

Guidelines for responding to challenges

presents a historical overview of the American Library Associations concerns and activities regarding intellectual freedom from 1924 to the present, updated by Barbara M. Jones, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom.

presents an essay on the history of each of the four core intellectual freedom documents of the American Library Association:

Library Bill of Rights

Code of Ethics of the American Library Association

The Freedom to Read

Libraries: An American Value

presents an essay about the history of each of these items. The essays are arranged in alphabetical order by title of the document.

: The subject index makes it easy to identify essays about the history of ALA documents related to a particular intellectual freedom issue such as access, censorship, or privacy.

Library administrators

Library workers and volunteers

Members of library governing bodies

Library and information science faculty members and students

Scholars of librarianship, intellectual and academic freedom, history, and civil liberties

Members of the American Library Association Executive Board, ALA Council, and ALA committees

We gratefully acknowledge the editors of previous editions of the Intellectual Freedom Manual for their careful recording of the history of these documents.

TRINA MAGI

Editor