Monday, November 10, 2008

Don't Mess With Us

Mother Jones has a profile of "America's Most Dangerous Librarians" - the principled librarians in Connecticut who challenged the constitutionality of a National Security Letter authorized by the PATRIOT Act and served on a library consortium.

It's good reading, even if the title is a play on popular stereotypes. Dangerous? Librarians? How could that be?

But here's a case where members of our profession stood up to authority for principled reasons, and that made them powerful. And a threat to a law that was enacted in haste to strengthen the FBI's surveillance powers even as it weakened the Constitution.

As Michael Moore once said, "don't mess with librarians."

1 comment:

Amy Springer said...

I am so excited that this blog exists. I heard about it from Michelle today at the MLA Conference. I graduated from GAC in 2004, and I received my MLIS at St. Kates. I also keep a blog. I am the Ch-Ch-Ch Changing Librarian. I work at Rasmussen College in Eagan.