I’ve always been appalled by British libel law as long as I’ve known about it. Basically it puts a strong onus on defendants to prove that what they have said is true, rather than on the accuser to prove that it is false. The result is an excessive real-world limitation on freedom of speech for … Read more UN says British libel law violates human rights
Noting an article of interest: “Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship” Science 18 July 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5887, pp. 395 – 399 DOI: 10.1126/science.1150473 James Evans finds that scholars’ access to online journals tends to reduce the breadth of the citations to other articles in their work; that is, articles outside … Read more Electronic journal access found to reduce breadth of citations
A favorite debate of pessimistic sophomores, or perhaps sophomoric pessimists, is as to whether our society and its future is more like George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s such a common juxtaposition and so simple to talk about it that I bring it up at the risk of terribly oversimplifying things. … Read more Intellectual Freedom advocacy in a Huxleyan world
Carol Kreck, a librarian, was arrested and removed from a public campaign event for John McCain in Denver yesterday. She was in front of the Denver Center for Performing Arts, and was charged with trespassing. Can you trespass on public property? Here’s the video and some more info…
Jeff Lilburn has reviewed Questioning Library Neutrality for the blog LibrarianActivist. His review is careful not to be overly excited by the book, but is much appreciated as the first review of the book to hit the screens, and by a person who understands what the book is trying to say. Thank you Jeff and … Read more Review of Questioning Library Neutrality
It is still not dead. A resolution has just been sent to the ALA Council list for discussion, calling on ALA to recognize the dissident “independent librarians” as members of the library community who deserve our support as colleagues, calling for the return of “library materials” to the “independent libraries,” and calling for the release … Read more The Cuba Debate – Why the “middle” is not the middle
Here’s a brief essay in the New York Times by Edward Rothstein that I am afraid I don’t have much to say about at the moment. I think I agree with it, at least partially, but I get the feeling that there is an important counterpoint that is not coming to mind. The editorial essay … Read more The problem with cultural property
I don’t often blog conference programs, but this is one I want to highlight, in part because I’m hoping that it will generate some papers and activities that will be helpful to people outside the conference and I want to let people know about that possibility. This is a program that will be being convened … Read more Freedom of Speech in the Library Workplace
The Los Angeles Times reports that Wendy Gonaver, an American Studies instructor at Cal State Fullerton and a Quaker, was fired from her job for refusing to sign a loyalty oath. She was willing to sign it with an attached statement qualifying her willingness to “defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic” through … Read more Instructor fired for refusing to sign a loyalty oath
From Lara Moore’s Restoring Order: The Ecole des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870 (pages 208-209): It … appears that the late Empire had strong political misgivings about the extension of libraries to the “popular” classes. In April 1864, Interior Minister Paul Boudet dispatched a circular marked “confidential” to department … Read more Napoleon III and public libraries
Popline, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a government-funded public database for research on population issues and reproductive health. I’ve been aware of it as an excellent resource for some time. The news: Gloria Won, a medical librarian at the University of California, San Francisco, noticed on Monday that the word “abortion” has … Read more Popline blocking searches on “abortion”
Byron Anderson is the compiler of Alternative Publishers of Books in North America, now in its sixth edition, from Library Juice Press. I asked Byron to talk a bit about this reference work for Library Juice Readers. Byron, why don’t you describe this resource and say how it got started? Byron: Alternative Publishers of Books … Read more Interview with APBNA compiler Byron Anderson
This is a great story; I just love this. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an exhibit by Wafaa Bilal, a suspected artist – I mean respected artist – was shut down by the institution amidst protests by the College Republicans. The exhibit involves a video game about assassinating President Bush. The art has a somewhat complex … Read more Bush assassination video game art censorship
This is from today’s New York Times. Adam Liptak reports that the Treasury Department is shutting down websites that have to do with travel to Cuba, even if the websites belong to foreign travel agencies who are not offering services to U.S. citizens, but only to people in other countries who can travel to Cuba … Read more Treasury Dept.’s outrageous web censorship
The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the Internet is the decentralised access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus. That’s Jürgen Habermas, originator of the concept of the public sphere, on Web 2.0, in his acceptance speech on winning the Bruno … Read more Habermas on Web 2.0
ALA Council passed a resolution on the crisis in Kenya, focusing on the issue of press freedoms. The resolution is below. One thing that helped sway Council to pass the resolution was news of a request for international support from the Kenyan library community. It is worth reading the views of Esther Obachi, National Secretary … Read more Kenya
Toni Samek and other library educators concerned with the declining place of information ethics, intellectual freedom, and matters having to do with the unique ethos of librarianship formed a Special Interest Group in ALISE (the Association of Library and Information Science Educators) to address Information Ethics in library education. Their SIG released a statement on … Read more ALISE Information Ethics Statement
I have not said anything about the controversy over the Golden Compass, because the issue has seemed too simple and clear cut to warrant comment. But take a look at what appeared in this week’s American Libraries Direct: The Golden Compass accused of anti-Catholic bias Several Toronto-area Catholic school boards in Ontario have removed Philip … Read more The Golden Compass and “anti-Catholic bias”
The BCLA IFC blog has an interview with Toni Samek, who is a very progressive LIS professor at the University Alberta. Toni writes and teaches on topics in critical librarianship, and had a book published earlier this year from Chandos Press: Librarianship and Human Rights: A Twenty-First Century Guide. The interview at the BCLA IFC … Read more Interview with Toni Samek
I have long been aware that that Canadian postal service will stop delivery of materials it deems obscene or otherwise censorship-worthy. I was not aware that they published a list (actually it’s the Canadian Border Services Agency that does it) of all the materials that it stops. The British Columbia Library Association IFC blog has … Read more Censorship at the Canadian Border