Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Intellectual Freedom

Intellectual freedom is a major issue for librarians. My graduate school, the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, recently awarded its annual intellectual freedom award to John Doe, the individual "whose legal challenge to a National Security Letter requesting library patron records represents an important defense of intellectual freedom." Read more.

1 comment:

Barbara said...

This is very cool indeed. And how sad that it has to go to "John Doe" - a sorry comment on the state of affairs. It reminds me of a comment Michael Gorman said when interviewed about the PATRIOT Act - that he wasn't sure he'd have the courage to resist an order that could land him in jail. This challenge, of course, is limited to challenging the gag order piece of the NSL legislation, but still it was gutsy and I'm grateful to "John Doe." And to the court clerk who managed to let slip which library organization was targeted... that was an interesting flub.