The ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom provides access to IF-related speaker sessions from ALA Annual 2010 via their blog http://www.oif.ala.org/oif/.

Embedded videos and links are provided for:

• Blasphemy! When Religious Values Clash with Intellectual Freedom Values
• Burning Man, Libraries and the 21st Century: The Intersection of the Individual and Society
• Ethics in a Digital World: Using Policies to Guide Professional and Personal Presence in Social Networking Spaces
• Intellectual Freedom Issues Briefing

This may be of particular interest to North Dakota prison libraries and other libraries that serve those who are incarcerated:

At the 2010 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC, the Intellectual Freedom Committee presented the “Prisoners’ Right to Read: An Interpretation to the Library Bill of Rights,” to ALA Council for adoption.  I am pleased to announce that Council adopted the new Interpretation during its final session on Tuesday, January 29.  Special thanks to Diane Walden and Melora Ranney Norman of the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Agencies for their help with drafting the Interpretation.

“Prisoners’ Right to Read: An Interpretation to the Library Bill of Rights” can be found at www.ifmanual.org/prisoners. For access to other Interpretations to the Library Bill of Rights as well as additional documents related to the Interpretations, please visit www.ifmanual.org/part2section2.

From American Libraries by George Eberhart | June 29, 2010

Excerpts from full article:

“…former ALA President Carol Brey-Casiano told—for the first time in its entirety, she said—about an experience she described as the worst in her professional career. It involved a Texas Ranger, a lawyer named Paco, the Patriot Act, and the Merritt Fund.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001, two men came into the El Paso (Tex.) Public Library where Brey-Casiano was (and still is) director. One man, wearing a white cowboy hat and a huge belt buckle, identified himself as a Texas Ranger. He told her a threat had been sent recently from one of the library computers and demanded to see the sign-up sheets. Brey-Casiano replied that she could not release patron records without a court order and that, in any case, the sign-up sheets were shredded every night. The ranger’s sidekick began citing the USA Patriot Act as authority, but she reminded him that it was a federal law, which cannot be invoked by a state law enforcement official.

The two men left, but the next morning a court order arrived asking for specific sign-up sheets—ones that could not be handed over because they had already been shredded. The following Monday, Brey-Casiano got a call from the mayor of El Paso, who accused her of withholding information (a felony in Texas) and told her he was putting her on administrative leave. Knowing her rights, she insisted she had done nothing wrong and followed proper legal procedures. The mayor admitted it was out of his hands, since the Texas Ranger had filed the complaint. He agreed to let her stay on the job as long as she told no one about the situation—effectively a gag order—during the course of an official investigation of her actions.

She immediately called the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, which advised her to find a lawyer quickly. OIF Director Judith Krug told her she should apply for assistance from the Merritt Fund. She applied and received a grant of $1,000, which helped her pay for her lawyer, an El Paso attorney named Francisco “Paco” Domínguez.

…”

I’ll share posts here that I contributed to the OIF blog during ALA Annual 2010. You can follow the series directly from the OIF blog, or from here, where I will duplicate postings. This is my fifth post. -Aubrey Madler, NDLA IF Committee

I absolutely loved Monday afternoon’s session, Blasphemy!: When Religious Values Clash with Intellectual Freedom. Both speakers (Irshad Manji and Paul Sturges) were excellent—they entertained me—they captured my undivided attention with their topics of thought. Part of what they spoke about was our right to offend and that by not acting upon that right, we destroy our own intellectual freedom—our freedom of speech. As Irshad said, offense is not bad. It creates the opportunity for deeper thought.

Similar to my comment in a previous post about the difficulty to read and access challenging/different things, it is difficult to start the conversations, and therefore all the more important. It takes brave people to exercise their right of free speech and ask the arduous questions (not only write about them) with the utmost of respect and clarity.

I closed out the day with the 40th Anniversary Merritt Fund dinner at the Folger Shakespeare Library. I heard an emotional story from a librarian who was under scrutiny for hindering an investigation because she would not relinquish computer use records. It is unfortunate that we need this fund in place, but it is a wonderful form of support for those standing for intellectual freedom and privacy.

I have to say thanks again to all those that welcomed me into their circles. I continue to make excellent contacts, discuss IF issues and explore ways in which to ensure our democratic freedoms.