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Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility in American Librarianship, 1967–1974

Toni Samek
Foreword by Sanford Berman

ISBN 978-0-7864-0916-7
appendix, notes, bibliography, index
197pp. softcover 2001

Description
Between 1967 and 1974, a number of librarians came together to push for change in the American Library Association. They soon prompted a majority of the profession to examine their role in the dissemination and preservation of culture and to ask basic questions about the terrain that the profession defends. A particular concern was the limitations to intellectual freedom (if any) that might arise in the pursuit of other perhaps equally worthy goals. The questions raised by this advocacy group were based on a relatively new concept of librarianly social responsibility that was partly an outgrowth of the civil rights and antiwar agitation of the period and partly a continuation of the proud traditions of the alternative press movement in the United States. The resulting dissension and turmoil exposed an inherent discrepancy not only between the rhetoric of ideals within the profession and the reality of practice but between librarians as agents of change—librarians’ having a social agenda—and professional “neutrality” or the provision of information for all sides without taking sides. These conflicts have never been resolved. The reader will find in this book a fully researched presentation of the years of ferment and political infighting that brought the issues into such sharp focus.

About the Author
Toni Samek is assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta. A member of the Canadian Library Association Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom, she also chairs the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Library Association of Alberta. She lives in Edmonton.









Table of Contents & Excerpts

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