Julie Edwards: And I'll get started. Thanks again.
Emily Knox: Sure.
Julie Edwards: Hello, everyone. I can see some of you joining us. We'll get started here in just a few minutes, but I wanted to give some time for everybody to come in and get settled.
Julie Edwards: I'm Julie Edwards with Niche Academy and I'm happy to see so many of you here today feel free. If you would like to go over to the chat and say, Hi, let us know where you're from. We do publish the Chat Transcript, because there's often a lot of really great information that goes back and forth in the chat. So you do not have to use it if you don't want to. But, you're more than welcome to
Julie Edwards: hop over there and say Hello! If you would like.
Julie Edwards: Hey! From Detroit, Alaska, Indiana. Wow! More Alaskans.
Julie Edwards: Florida, Vancouver, San Diego, hey? Salt Lake. North Carolina. Wow! Now everybody is rolling, and Hi, everybody. Hi! Washington State, Ohio, New York, you said, Hey, Wyoming.
Julie Edwards: the last webinar we did. I did go back after and count We had 46 of 50 States represented. So one of these days, and we're going to get all the States in here. hey? Lots of Alaskans so nice to see
Julie Edwards: so many of you here. Hello! Hello! See some of our friends and colleagues from Canada. So nice to see you
Julie Edwards: West Virginia, Tennessee. More more Wyoming nights. Hello, hey! North Dakota.
Julie Edwards: Oklahoma, Maryland. Colorado.
Julie Edwards: From wicked hot. Fresno. Yeah, I added, the wicked. It's wicked hot in Montana also today. So my sympathies. Hey, Massachusetts, hey? Ohio, Illinois, Virginia.
Julie Edwards: More Washingtonians. So much so nice to see all of you joining us
Julie Edwards: North Dakota, Canada, Utah, hey, Idaho! My neighbor.
Julie Edwards: Pennsylvania.
Julie Edwards: so nice to see so many of you joining us feel free to hop over to the chat if you would like. We do publish the chat, so you don't have to post anything there if you don't want to. but it's so nice to see where so many of you are from.
Julie Edwards: Welcome, everyone welcome. See, see a lot of people still joining us. If you're just joining us and welcome, we're so happy to have you here.
Julie Edwards: Seattle, North Carolina, Florida. Maryland.
Julie Edwards: Utah, so great to see everyone. So it's right at noon here in the mountains, so we will go ahead and get started officially with this webinar. Welcome to all of you! Welcome to this Webinar, understanding, intellectual freedom and censorship.
Julie Edwards: I'm Julie Edwards. I'm a librarian and instructional designer with niche Academy, and I am so happy that you're here with us today. We're get started with the webinar and just a bit. But I want to do our standard housekeeping before we get started.
Julie Edwards: let me start by introducing niche Academy. We are an easy to use all in one learning platform to help libraries create and deliver effective training and measure learner success. So our platform is the perfect tool. If you are looking to increase your E resource usage, move your programming, including your story times online and deliver and track training for staff and board development.
Julie Edwards: If you're interested in finding out more about our e-learning solution chatting with a member of our team, hearing what your colleagues and other libraries have to say, I will drop a link to our website in the chat, and you can check us out and learn more about us. There
Julie Edwards: we are recording this webinar, I will make the recording the slides, the Chat Transcript and the audio transcript available to everyone who is registered after the presentation. All of this will go on our blog. And I will email all of that to you within a few days. If you would like, you can turn on the closed captioning button at the bottom of your zoom screen.
You'll see. As many of you have seen that the chat is active feel free to use it to talk with each other. But if you have a question for the presenter, please put that in the question and answer box at the bottom of your zoom screen. There are well over 400 of us here, and climbing and stuff gets lost in the chat. So if you have a question for Emily. Please put it
in the Q. A. And I will do my best to moderate that at the end of the webinar.
Julie Edwards: This Webinar series is part of our larger commitment to solving bigger problems together and providing continuing education in the library world. I am so happy that you have joined us today so happy to see so many of you from all over the place. For this incredibly important topic.
you can see our upcoming webinars and register for those on our blog, and I will drop a link to that in the chat as well.
Julie Edwards: So, without further ado, our presenter today is Emily Knox. Emily is an associate professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois, at Urbana Champaign, my own library school. Her research interests include information, access and intellectual freedom and Censorship.
Julie Edwards: Her most reason book, Foundations of Intellectual Freedom, was published by Ala Neil Schuman in 2,022, and her previous book book Banning in the 20 First Century Bookburn. I'm sorry book Banning. In Twenty-first Century America
Julie Edwards: is the first monograph in the Beta-fi Move Scholar series on against censorship, and that was published by Roman and Little Field. Emily serves on the board of the National Coalition against censorship, and she is the editor of the Journal of Intellectual freedom and Privacy. She received her Phd. From the doctoral program at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, and I am thrilled to welcome her
Julie Edwards: to Niche Academy's Webinar series today. Thank you, Emily.
Emily Knox: Thank you. I'm really excited to be here today. I have a few slides to go through just talking about intellectual freedom and censorship.
Emily Knox: if you have any questions, please put them in the Q. A. Especially if anything is unclear that I might have mentioned.
Emily Knox: So today, I just want to start with
Emily Knox: an introduction to intellectual freedom. I think it's important to know that this is actually a very jargony term that is mostly used in library and information science. Most people, when they talk about intellectual freedom, use terms like free speech.
Emily Knox: banning censorship first amendment. The term intellectual freedom is really only used within our profession
Emily Knox: doesn't mean it's not important. It's just important to know that if you use that term with other people who are outside of the profession. They may not know what you're talking about.
Emily Knox: so let me give you a definition of intellectual freedom. It is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause, or movement they explored. So this is an unofficial definition from the American Library Association, which is never officially defined intellectual freedom.
Emily Knox: But it's important to know that this is really a principle that we uphold within the profession of librarianship
Emily Knox: censorship, on the other hand, is the opposite of intellectual freedom. It's a suppression of ideas and information that certain persons, individuals, groups, or government officials, find objectionable or dangerous.
Emily Knox: So why does intellectual freedom matter? A lot of this is actually, I get from Kmatisen, who I'm not quoting from directly, but she is a philosopher of information and really looks at. Why does it matter if we have access to information so building off of Kmatis's work? We can see what Barbecough here says, which is that intellectual freedom really leads to autonomy.
Emily Knox: So what do I mean by that? What is Barbikov mean by that? Autonomy is an instrumentally valuable for having the moral capacity to make your own choices. Basically, it means that
Emily Knox: I can move to the world and think of what is important for me. What is it? What do I want to choose to do? And you cannot do this without access to information.
Emily Knox: Barbercloth includes 5 different competencies for this. access to information about many life possibilities. I'll emphasize this throughout the talk. But why intentional freedom matters is that it means that you can read or view, or talk about other possibilities in the world, right? Not just the ones that have been given to you by
Emily Knox: our society, by your parents, by whomever. But other people, how do they live their lives? Is that something interesting to me? Is that something that I actually want to reject?
Emily Knox: Right? This is why intellectual freedom matters also for self reflection, critical thinking, so forth, and the willingness and ability to act, which I think is an important one, because it's really about not only is it just thinking about it, but saying, and I want to make this change, whatever that change might be.
Emily Knox: John Burgess, who's actually My fellow co-editor found date for foundations of in information ethics talks about flourishing when it comes to intellectual freedom.
Emily Knox: So this is the idea that it's the good that results from living and accord with the virtues.
Emily Knox: the classical virtues, things like justice, etc.
Emily Knox: And it's simplest form flourishing as the idea that to be good is to fulfill one's purpose in life. It's a way of idea, of of pursuing the idea of self.
Emily Knox: since everyone determines his or her ideal self flourishing as an internally created good. So really, when I think about intellectual freedom, what I think about is that
Emily Knox: I am making this decision myself. I'm looking at information myself. That's the autonomous idea. And I'm pursuing a good life. That's the flourishing. So being able to interact with many different ideas of the world allows me to be a more fulfilled human being.
Emily Knox: What I look at in a lot of my work, though, is what I call censorship practices. That practices is very important, because people can get really hung up on the idea of being a sensor or having things censored.
Emily Knox: I, however, really try to think about it as a practice in which we all engage right? So there are things that I censor for myself. I don't watch horror movies, for example.
Emily Knox: when I talk about censorship practices, I use what I call the for ours to make it easier to remember them. So these are redaction
Emily Knox: restriction, relocation, removal. And I'll go through those one by one. So redaction is when you mark through something. So this happens with classified documents. This happens when I do free of Information Act requests to libraries to do my research. They mark through people's personal information that I don't have that.
but also this can happen on in collections. When people mark through, say pictures or words that they find objectionable in different ways, that is, redaction 150.
Emily Knox: When we talk about restriction, we need to think a bit more about the intended audience. So who did the Creator say this should be for
Emily Knox: what restriction really is is saying, okay.
Emily Knox: we will make this semi available to somebody. We will put it behind the desk. So you have to ask for permission. There's essentially a gatekeeper between you and this information.
Emily Knox: So
Emily Knox: the way this usually happens, a lot of times is in the library. things that will be considered.
Emily Knox: actually, there's a couple of different things. Sometimes it's because they're considered harmful, or because people are worried about the book being harmed itself. So this is what happened with Madonna's sex book. This is often restricted, and you had to ask for it. To be able to take that book out of the library. So restriction is really a way of saying yes, you can have it. But you have to ask someone in power for permission to be able to engage with it.
Emily Knox: Relocation is also a way. something you have to think about when in terms of intended audience. So it's easy to think about it in a public library. If you're in a public library. Somebody says, no, this isn't a juvenile book, it doesn't belong in the J's. It actually believe is an adult book. It belongs in the regular adult section. Or this is an why, a book. It actually belongs to the adult section, or this is a buffet shouldn't be on the open shelf. It should actually be in, say, a parent section or something like that.
Emily Knox: So this is a request for relocation to make sure that people don't stumble upon this book, and I have an entire article on the terms stumbled upon how people worry about people encountering information that they might find up setting or distasteful, or that they disagree with in the library.
Emily Knox: Finally, removal is what most people think about when they think about censorship. This means that something is removed from the collection.
Emily Knox: However, as people who work in information institutions, we need to think about this more carefully. Requests to remove are not as simple as just removing something from the collection.
Emily Knox: If you work in a school library, for example. having asked me something to remove from the curriculum.
Emily Knox: It's not the same as asking something to be removed from, say, a classroom library, or the school library, or the summer reading list. These are actually different requests. And I'll just say that it's been difficult for me to talk to journalists about this, to get them to understand that, like Banning is just this broad term. But, in fact, the requests that people have in different cases can be quite different.
Emily Knox: So once again, those practices are redaction, restriction, relocation, and removal. I also talk about some passive practices. I call those for ours the active practices. This is something like self censorship. This is saying, and it's something I'm very concerned about right now. Well, I'm not going to create that work. I'm not going to write that book because I'm worried about what the response will be to it
Emily Knox: or having bias in your collection development policies. That's something where I don't like that book. I don't like that movie. And so I am not going to purchase it for my collection, for whatever reason.
Emily Knox: So I call these passive practices because they are. you not actively doing something? You're deciding not to do something.
Emily Knox: So I think it's also important to know that there is a long, long history of censorship. It actually comes from a Latin term, the sensor which was in the Roman state. It was one who monitored morality. there's a very famous
Emily Knox: Index of prohibitive books which I have I cover here. This was published by the Roman Catholic Church between 1,559 and 1,966. It included information, books, that the Vatican considered to be heretical and pure or obscene. There are lots of these different lists around of things that people thought were upsetting. the history of censorship is one that is global.
Emily Knox: And really, as soon as people were able to write down or say a story, it was censored because somebody was uncomfortable with it. So this is not a new phenomenon in the history of the world. I just try to get people to think a little bit more broadly. I will say that the censorship attempts that we are seeing right now are quite unique in the history of our country.
Emily Knox: However.
Emily Knox: we have, of course, seen this before. one of the things I discuss is models of censorship. So this is a way of it's a little bit artificial. But thinking about who is trying to do the sensory, so is it State sponsored? Is it institutional that would be like the index of prohibited books? Or is it an individual?
Emily Knox: What we actually see is that individuals use government institutions like a board to be able to censor what they do not like.
Emily Knox: I have a picture of Anthony Comstock up here. He is, of course back in the news. Oddly enough, Anthony Comstock use his position as the Inspector General of the United States Post Office to keep information he did not like from going through the mail.
Emily Knox: So yes, he was an individual, but in fact, he engaged in state sponsored censorship. You can find many different articles right now about the Contact Act. This is, of course, related to abortion and Dodds that we have seen this re and this interest again in Anthony Comstock, but it relates especially to issues of censorship and intellectual freedom.
Emily Knox: I also have seduction to the innocent. This is about comics Frederick Wortham thought that comic books led to juvenile delinquency. Basically. my colleague, Carol Tilly, has done quite a bit of work on this. I recommend that you read her articles. If you're interested in looking at how Congress interfered with the publication of Comics in the 1950 s.
Emily Knox: So more broadly, I think it's also important to know that intellectual freedom is not just something that we have because we exist in the United States or North America. Right? It is actually a right of all people. simply because they are, we are human beings.
Emily Knox: This was encoded in the freedom of expression. in the UN declaration of Human Rights in 1,948 Article 19, which states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and to seek, receive, and impart information ideas through any media regardless of frontier.
Emily Knox: I like. I also encourage you to read more about
Emily Knox: UN decoration of of human rights the Us. Is delegate to the development of the Declaration of Human Rights, was Eleanor Roosevelt. She was one of the very few women who was part of this group, and actually
Emily Knox: And I'm going to pronounce this person's man name wrong. The dag hammer scolded library at the UN. Actually has all of the documents. They are actually verbatim. You can see the discussions from everyone of throughout the world and how they were working through.
Emily Knox: What do we include in the UN declaration of of human rights? It's especially interesting. when they get to this particular article, which had different numbers at different times. And how they were really talking about what does it mean for something to be
Emily Knox: accessible versus available. So I'll just give a quick
Emily Knox: anecdote here the Ussrs argued for information to be available, but not accessible. And actually they were voted down by all the other countries about that. But it's an interesting dichotomy to put in your head like, what does it mean when something is available versus being accessible.
Emily Knox: So
Emily Knox: it's important to know that this is not just based on first amendment law. It's actually something that we all deserve, that we all have a right to by simply being human beings, that we have the right to intellectual freedom.
Emily Knox: A lot of this is based on Mill. So for any of you who are very interested in the history of thinking about intellectual freedom. I encourage you to read Mills on Liberty. this is a nineteenth century treatise. that really talks about what I will call the classically liberal understanding of freedom of expression and intellectual freedom.
Emily Knox: Basically, mill gives foregrounds for fame expression. This is the idea that silence, opinions may be true, that science, opinion may contain some granted truth, even though it is called an error.
Emily Knox: that truth must be contested, or it is simply prejudice, opinion, and that the meaning of truth must be held with conviction from reason and personal experience. So why should you have freedom of expression. Why should you have a right to interrupt your freedom? It's actually because if you don't have that right, then you are just
Emily Knox: having your own opinion, you are not necessarily reasoning through your opinions. You may not be able to hear opinions of people who disagree with you. So this is really the foundation that eventually showed up in the first amendment.
Emily Knox: So in the United States, this is the first amendment to the Constitution. that Congress shall make the law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or bridging the freedom of press, or of the press
Emily Knox: or speech or of the press, sorry, or the right of people peaceably to assemble and to position the government for a redress of grievances. We are currently, in a time where we are re-evaluating what is First Amendment law.
Emily Knox: So I'm just saying that
Emily Knox: pretty neutrally that we can see that the current cases that are moving through the Supreme Court now. Are unsettling what people thought was settled precedent. I don't know where it's going to go. Nobody knows
Emily Knox: part of what we're seeing even with our libraries is that this is a push against what was established First Amendment law in the United States. So we are living through this, we will see what the outcome is.
Emily Knox: I'm not going to go through all of these, but these are very important cases to know about. These are all listed on the American Library Association's website. So these are cases for the Us. Supreme Court.
Emily Knox: actually, the one I will. Highlight right now is Board of Education island trees. V. Pico, mostly known as the Pico case It had its fortieth anniversary last year.
Emily Knox: and I encourage you to just take a look at the Wikipedia page and look at the titles that were Part of that case. They were mostly what we could call diverse books. So what goes around comes around?
Emily Knox: Pico is a limited case. I, I and other people in this area are a little concerned. If Pico comes back up to the Us. Supreme Court. How it might be decided. So we are waiting, and we are watchful and talking to allies about what might happen with these various cases if they do come up to the Supreme Court.
Emily Knox: So in the United States, intellectual freedom was actually codified in the American Library Association professional code. So I have here professional ethics, the Aa code, because, in fact, there are many different codes out there. So some of you might be part of the Special Libraries Association. some of you might be archivists.
Emily Knox: all of these different associations have their own codes. This is the code for the American Library Association.
number
Emily Knox: 2. Article 2 is we uphold the principles of intellectual freedom, and for this all efforts to censor library resources. The other ones I've highlighted have to do also with intellectual freedom of various sites.
Emily Knox: privacy, intellectual property rights, personal versus professional ethics as well as Number 9, which is the newest one which is about social justice.
Emily Knox: the Library Bill of Rights. I'm sorry about the fuzziness. I couldn't find a really good
Emily Knox: image of this, but you can buy a copy of it. This is for the people who come to the library. This is what they can expect when they come to the library.
Emily Knox: So,
Emily Knox: interestingly, it says, libraries should challenge censorship, and some some fulfillment. Sorry of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment. That's number 3.
Emily Knox: number 4. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgement of free expression and freedoms, access to ideas. So I just encourage you to take a look and read carefully through the library Bill of Rights. It's something that comes up
Emily Knox: quite a bit in challenge cases right now. But it's important for people who are working in libraries to know what it actually says. So just in, take people's word for it actually know and be able to say, well, you know, have you read through Library Bill of Rights? It's actually about presenting all points of view, not just 1 point of view
Emily Knox: along with the Library Bill of Rights. There's also the freedom to read statement. This is, most recently, endorsed by the Levit Metro Library Association in 2,004. This is also for people who use the library.
Emily Knox: so it is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, are considered dangerous by the majority. So you can see that I referred to Mill. How
Emily Knox: 1 million I'll just use that term. a lot of these ideas are, they're really based on the idea of having access to information, having freedom of expression allows you to hold your own convictions, which leads to autonomy and flourishing
Emily Knox: a lot of people don't know much about this particular statement, but this is the freedom to view statement which was on endorsed in 1,990. So, along with the freedom to read statement. There's also the frame to view statement. This is about audio visual materials. I encourage libraries to also include this in their policies. So the Library Bill of Rights, the Free, and to read and the free interview statement are really to make sure that everyone.
Emily Knox: all people, have a place at the library.
Emily Knox: this is really based on your own mission. So sometimes people say, Well, what about different types of libraries? I worked, for example, at a theological library. We still accepted the Lvr. And the frame to read and pre to view statements. your library might have a mission that is a little different from, say, a public library, but still it's important that this be communicated to your
Emily Knox: staff and patrons about who the libraries for what the mission is, what it means to have primitive expression within the library.
Emily Knox: So this goes a little bit more to my own research. In case you're interested. I study what I call the discourse of censorship.
Emily Knox: Basically, this is how the people justify saying, I don't want you to read that I'm just using the term read. It can also be videos, all sorts of things, music. But how do people say I want to abridge your freedom to do that? So I look at relationships among power, identity and the nature of knowledge. Basically, people will say things like, I'm a taxpayer. Therefore I get to have a say over this library.
Emily Knox: That's basically what that's talking about there.
the status of libraries and communities. So what is the symbol of the library? What does the library mean to people.
Emily Knox: one thing I am looking at. In one of our recent grads, Marina Morales, was looking at this in her dissertation which is on the idea that people love, but don't necessarily trust their library. So this is kind of a tension that you can see right now.
Emily Knox: Also, libraries can be very magical places.
Emily Knox: Books show up.
Emily Knox: No one knows how they got there. So when I go to my local library, just move to Bloomington, Illinois, you know there's a new but new book section. I don't. I don't have those books. But there! But most people do not know.
Emily Knox: it's just you walk in. You don't have to pay anything.
Emily Knox: and there are books, and you can take them out without paying for that. How does that happen. it's a very opaque process, and often it's a process it looked at that's looked at with suspicion.
Emily Knox: Finally, I look at reading practices. So this is really, I'll go to the next slide.
Emily Knox: This is too much depth right now. But this is really looking at.
Emily Knox: How have we understood reading over time? So
Emily Knox: I go through a long outline of the history of reading practices. Some things that are very interesting are the switch to reading silently when we used to always read aloud
Emily Knox: also, who is considered to be rational and able to think rationally about what they are reading. This is mostly the province of men and not women and children.
Emily Knox: People sometimes push back on me about that. But if we look at the books that are mostly challenged even now, they are books that are for children and women, not necessarily books that are the province of that are marketed to men so thrillers horror books. These rarely show up in challenge books. List.
Emily Knox: I also look at the idea of common sense. So for those of you who are very interested in the theory. Behind this I link a Scottish common sense philosophy to the idea that the words on the page mean what they say and say what they mean.
Emily Knox: This comes up a lot right now, especially with gender queer, and all boys are blue, so people will show an image from gender queer and be like. There is only way you one way you can interpret this particular image.
Emily Knox: or they'll read out a section from all boys are blue, and say, there's only one way. You can understand what George Johnson is saying in this particular section.
Emily Knox: this is a very common sense in this philosophical idea. understanding of how texts work.
Emily Knox: I almost always have to talk about this book. This is Carrie Robinson's innocence, childhood, a knowledge and the construction of childhood. What she really discusses is, why is information so important for kids especially?
Emily Knox: And she discusses this concept of difficult knowledge, and this is knowledge that adults find challenging to address in their own lives, but especially with children, and that is everywhere in these challenges that we see right now right? These are grappling with incredibly difficult topics
Emily Knox: all the topics of identity. topics of what does it mean to be a citizen? Right? How do we understand our difficult history as a settler colonial state
Emily Knox: what it mean when gender identity is more fluid the end people had understood it. Dan it to be before.
Emily Knox: What does it mean that we use to enslave people.
Emily Knox: These are things that most of us are not used to discussing in our everyday lives, much less with our kids. But what Kerry Robinson says is why it's important is that kids must have agency and vocabulary to describe their own bodies and lines.
Emily Knox: I'm going to give a quick anecdote here. I'm on the board with Robi Harris the National College against censorship, who wrote, it's perfectly normal.
Emily Knox: And someone recently wrote her and said that
Emily Knox: a kid was reading through. It's perfectly normal, and I'm going to bring up a difficult topic right now. And they had turned to the page that showed
Emily Knox: a kid being sexually abused by someone in their family. And the child took that
Emily Knox: book to the parent and said, This is what's happening to me.
Emily Knox: and it was through reading that book that the child was able to be removed from that harmful in situation.
Emily Knox: and then with the other parent, who is not abusing with them?
Emily Knox: When we think about what does it mean to have agency and vocabulary?
I think that's the best example I can give.
Emily Knox: because without that book
Emily Knox: the child would not have been able to describe the harm and trauma that was being done to them.
Emily Knox: I'm sorry
Emily Knox: I don't have any water right here.
Emily Knox: one thing that people worry about quite a bit. And is that
Emily Knox: is this idea of balance on in
Emily Knox: in
Emily Knox: sorry in collections.
Emily Knox: So I really like the way that Jenna Friedman talks about it, that people should strive to achieve representation, not balance
Emily Knox: And the recent thing that I was writing.
Emily Knox: I had some reviewers get upset to me at me about this idea of balance. They like well, balance means representation, and I said, but that's not how most people think about it. Most people think of balance meaning, if I have 5 of one thing, I need 5 of another that makes it balanced right.
Emily Knox: They don't think of it as being a representation, and therefore a balance collection is representative. What they think about is a balance collection has equal amounts of everything. So I just prefer the term representation. I wrote this back to the reviewers. I'm still waiting to see what they say about my explanation. For this
Emily Knox: I also encourage us to think about the full spectrum of liberal values. So before this latest wave of challenge attacks, I spent a lot of time discussing whether or not social justice and in terms of freedom were compatible.
Emily Knox: Libraries are really a institution that is based in classical, liberal values. That is the value of individual progress. But we can also think about each individual as
Emily Knox: as being part of a social space and having a group identity. So these things all go together. The library is a place for each person. and we try to recognize the entire person when they come up to the reference desk and ask us a question, we take that person's concerns seriously, no matter where they occupy a particular space.
this is one of the great things about libraries is that
Emily Knox: we treat all humans with dignity and respect, and that is not true of most places in the world.
Emily Knox: So people ask me a lot of times, and this goes out of my more
Emily Knox: educational point. But just like, what should we do. And actually, my best friend just asked me about this. and I always start with the ban books.
Emily Knox: there's a list of 850 from representative crowds in Texas. I'm sure you'll find something on there that you like. I love Jane Mount's work. She has many different book covers of band books
Emily Knox: support these creators. There are ones that we know well, but there are others who are not known as well, and
Emily Knox: Some of them are not being bought as much as They might have been because libraries are not.
We are worried about
Emily Knox: push back.
Emily Knox: If they have these works on their shelves. So really I cannot say enough. Read ban books, support the authors. who are being targeted right now
Emily Knox: along with that, be prepared and organized. I love showing this because kids are actually the best advocates for these works that are being challenged at the moment.
Emily Knox: they can organize themselves. They have banned books. If you have children, or taking care of children, go to your Local Board meeting with your kids and show the civic process. Everybody has the right to speak. Have your kid come up with their 2 to 3 min speech. about why that particular book matters to them.
Emily Knox: Also, I really am encouraging academic librarians not to think that this will not hit them. We can see what is happening in Florida.
Emily Knox: the library, and that new college was fired right? My worry is that this is going to move from schools and public libraries up into higher Ed, and that academic libraries will next be a target.
Emily Knox: be prepared. Make sure you know what your provost thinks about this, that your staff is aware of the principles of intellectual freedom. Do not think that you won't be a target because you are in higher Ed.
Emily Knox: For those of you who are currently being targets. I do ask that you reach out and know that you are not alone. There are people out there who are willing to support you
Emily Knox: and I will just go through some of those right now, so you can join United against book bands. The free and to read foundation is legal arm of the American Library Association. I'm a former president of the Free and Trade Foundation. you can join as an individual if any legal issues come up. That is where they will be
Emily Knox: sent through on behalf of libraries. If you are a writer that are joining or paying attention to what pen America is doing. If any of your friends, students, kids, or writers, encourage them to be aware of pen America.
Emily Knox: Finally, national collection and censorship is a small but mighty organization. I'm the chair of the board.
Emily Knox: We run the students right to read campaign, and also our training young people to be advocates for free speech. Also, we do a lot of work with social media companies and their censorship of.
Emily Knox: for example, nipples on Instagram. I encourage you to just take a look at the different programs the national question of censorship does
Emily Knox: for those of you who are librarians. There's the merit fund. If anything comes up, this is a fun to support you. When you have had something happen to you because of your support for intellectual freedom, I should disclose. I am a trustee of the Merit Fund
Emily Knox: afternoon with this. but I have one more side. that. Words have power, and you. This is why people ban books. It's not because they don't think that books are important. It's quite the opposite. They think that books are incredibly important, and that's why they try to censor them.
Emily Knox: But free people read freely.
Emily Knox: This is part of our right, as human beings to freedom of expression, to intellectual freedom, to be able to encounter and engage all sorts of ideas, and wrestle with them ourselves, not to have other people impose their own values upon us.
Emily Knox: Oh, I just like to thank you for attending. this Webinar, I'll be teaching my intellectual freedom and censorship class this fall. I start, I think, in 2 2 or 3 Tuesdays. it's an online class. And I'm really looking forward to hearing from the students. I'm actually redoing my syllabus to match this moment. really thinking about, what do
Emily Knox: students and new librarians need to be able to respond to the challenges that we have right now. So thank you very much.
Julie Edwards: Thank you so much, Emily. You're getting a lot of great thank yous in the chat, and I, personally like this is just warned my librarian heart like I want to stand up and cheer. So thank you for this.
Julie Edwards: As a reminder to everybody, I'll be sending the recording and the slides and the chat and audio transcripts. and we do have some questions. So we're gonna jump right into these. someone is asking our library director believes we shouldn't do anything for banned books week, because bringing up band books gives people ideas. How should we? As a staff handle this?
Emily Knox: that's not how it works. that's really funny. I'm sorry. That's really funny to me.
Emily Knox: it's the idea. It's actually a a censorship. The way that the book challenges work themselves like. If we remove these books, then kids will never question their identity again. That's not how it works.
Emily Knox: I encourage you to observe ban books, week. put up all different types of books there are
Emily Knox: I don't even know how many books over time you can find bibliographies of books and surprise people maybe not just focus on the ones that are being challenged right now, but the ones that have been challenged in the past. So when I did ban books week at the seminary that I worked at. It was all religious books. I had, like Bibles, Bibles in English
Emily Knox: that had been banned, and the people burned at the stake for translating Bibles like there. All sorts of things out there.
Emily Knox: Not celebrating Dan books. Week does not mean that people will not know about it. That's not how the world works.
Julie Edwards: Thank you.
Julie Edwards: Someone's asking, what can we do to help libraries and librarians and states that are the target of organized censorship efforts. This person says, I live in Santa Cruz, California, which is never really had a censorship attempt. So I think the idea is like, how do we? How do we help our colleagues across the country?
Emily Knox: This is but needs to be but done very carefully. So I know that people are always like, well, what is Ala doing? The fact is that sometimes
Emily Knox: it's not good for outsiders to come in right and be like we are swooping in and helping
Emily Knox: What I would say to do is to send postcards. Apparently I just heard this recently that staff really like receiving words of support from people outside. So you would send a postcard
Emily Knox: and I would be ready for something to happen in Santa Cruz?
Emily Knox: Do your own library directors know who their allies are? Who is on your board.
Emily Knox: who is working to put other people on your board?
Emily Knox: When are the board meetings? Does everybody at the library know about intellectual freedom? Be? This is what I mean by be prepared. I don't think anybody is safe, no matter where they think they are.
Emily Knox: So for the people who are outside of your I geographic reason, I would.
Emily Knox: You know I would think about sending the postcards. But this is why our State Library associations make such a big difference. because this is a very local issue, even though it's seen as a national issue.
Julie Edwards: I love that answer. Thank you so much.
Emily Knox: Someone is asking working in a rural public library. It does feel like we're often alone does the freedom to read foundation support librarians who have police reports filed against them, or their jobs threatened for displaying Lgbtq. Plus books.
Emily Knox: and if something comes up
Emily Knox: both the American Library Association and the Fram Trade Foundation.
Emily Knox: I can support you.
Emily Knox: or what they will probably do is, have you get in touch with your local State Library Association. They are actually in a much better position to be able to support you on a state level. They'll also know. Do you need to get in touch with the Aclu? Does it make sense for you to contact a lawyer? All of those questions?
Emily Knox: I guess what I'm saying is, do not feel like you have to go through this alone. Right?
Emily Knox: I I I just worry that so many people are like I don't know what to do reach out. You can call the National College against censorship. Somebody might not pick up the phone right away. But I promise you someone will call back.
Emily Knox: I think, about the National Coalition is that it's truly a coalition of I cannot even remember how many as organizations across the country, and we all talk to each other. Right? So
Emily Knox: do not feel like you are alone. Call I? I would start with your State
Emily Knox: Library Association. Start there.
Emily Knox: report any of this that happens because that is part of the tactic. Right?
Emily Knox: actually, this is a strategy. I would say more. which is to make you feel alone, but make sure that you are talking to people.
Julie Edwards: Thank you. This person's asking. I'm a teen librarian. Do you have any ideas for how to introduce intellectual freedom, content into programming for teens and younger audiences.
Emily Knox: Yes, there are great books about that. Are fiction books. about band books. So there's a band books club. It's a new graphic novel. There's an older, graphic novel called Amicus. There's a There's also books for younger people, and you can always read Fahrenheit 451, right? I that's how I would introduce it. And then I would move into thinking about it more.
Emily Knox: you know a band books, club, or like something like that which matches different people's interests. There's so many books on that list. from the representative in in Texas. There are many of them for kids, many of them for young adults. So I would just start that way. But starting with the books that are about band books, I think, is a good way to do it.
Julie Edwards: Awesome. Thank you. This is an interesting question. Someone says I've heard of a few instances recently, where authors, books were cancelled from being ordered in large quantities due to public pushback. Like the picture book that was cancelled from the scholastic Book fair because of one line in the author's biography.
Julie Edwards: Isn't this part of censorship as well? And what's the answer to how to get around this.
Emily Knox: Yeah. So actually, I bought that author's book.
Emily Knox: so we also have to encourage publishers to not engage in censorship themselves. So the way that you do. This is, make sure you're not just buying from the Big 5 that you are buying
Emily Knox: smaller presses who are more likely to publish diverse books I mean diverse broadly, I don't in just bypass or L to you, I just mean, like diverse thought, all sorts of issues. and then we have to put pressure on the Big 5 to not engage in censorship themselves, and I mean all types of censorship. They are very conservative, and I mean that in a small seasons enterprises they want to make money.
Emily Knox: We do not want to be part of Twitter wars or sorry X wars. So we? you know. So we need to make sure that they are aware of what is going on. But you'll see that what happened with that author is that she publicize what happened?
Emily Knox: and I'm sorry I cannot remember her name right now.
Emily Knox: And we need. That's part of like not feeling alone.
Emily Knox: she said. I decided not to do this, and so we have to encourage everybody to buy that book. It's a beautiful book. It's about Japanese internment
Emily Knox: and her
Emily Knox: parents grandparents who fell in love in a us Japanese internment camp. Once I heard about that. I bought the book, and I hope that my local libraries will do it as well. so those are the kind of engagements that I would say that we should. We should do.
Julie Edwards: Thank you. This is going back to one of the earliest points he made and going into general collection development ethics, who decides what section of book belongs in. Just because an author says it's a Y a book doesn't mean it actually belong
Emily Knox: in the Y section. So can you address that? Sure, this is the more sciencey part of library and information science. I love teaching organization, and price, organization and access. Because
Emily Knox: this is why cataloging is so important people are like, should I take a catalogue in class? Yes, you should take a cataloging class if you have time to do that because
Emily Knox: it actually is a different answer for different places. It's based on your mission. It's based on what other books you already have. It's based on your patrons.
Emily Knox: I would say that author intent does matter to a point, but it is one of the things that you keep in mind as you are categorizing and classifying different materials.
Emily Knox: the thing about cloud categorization and classification is that it is performative. What do I mean by that? I mean that the book becomes something. So the best example I love to give is Dianica Baldin's Outlander
Emily Knox: Dr. Baldin said that she did not want those books to be in the Roman section because they are Romance section are for women, and if you doubt me, when it was the last time you saw someone who is gendered male in a romance section. she wants them to be in the fiction section, so they don't become romance novels.
Emily Knox: So I know this is a longer answer. But what I'm saying is that actually, classification is very difficult The people working in the back in your library have to think through all of these things and weigh these issues when they are staring at an item right like this is part of the work of librarianship which is thinking about.
Emily Knox: who is intended for this? How does this make sense in our system? How do we think about this? But there will never be a right answer for everybody, because if you have 13 year old kids, I mean, this is especially difficult for middle school librarians. Right? You have 10 year olds and 14 year olds. Those are very different kids.
Emily Knox: and thinking about what goes on the shelf for them is very difficult. I don't envy you at all, because they are very different stages of their lives, and I don't think there's any way to make it very easy.
Julie Edwards: Thank you. So there's a sort of a related question, do you think there's a substantive difference between a public library versus a school library? But there are books that a public library has that might be considered inappropriate for a school library.
Emily Knox: It depends on the school, and it depends on the like on the school library. So these different institutions have different missions. The mission of a school library is to support the education and of the school, and also the professional development of the staff. So the teachers
Emily Knox: So the curriculum of the school comes first for a school library. That is not true for a public library. Their mission is to serve the public, even the public that they don't see all the time.
Emily Knox: so you must keep your mission in mind. if you when you are doing collection development. Now, that doesn't say like, okay, is this book appropriate for this paid people? And the this book of orbit for those people? I don't know. It really depends on what book you're talking about, who the people are, how your school operates, how your public library operates.
Emily Knox: Okay. what you have to keep in mind is
Emily Knox: Am I engaging in self censorship by not buying this book because I don't like it or I'm worried. Someone else won't like it. That's not necessarily the right reason. That's not a good reason not to buy a book. Does it fit with your collection development policy? This is why policy matters and why it should be discussed among
Emily Knox: the staff as a whole and endorsed by the board. Because you do really need to think through. Does this work? Does this not work, and it will be different for everybody.
Emily Knox: Thank you. So there is a question that came up about. If the director insists on self censorship, what should librarians do? And I'm guessing. The question is, the answer is to revisit the policies or to push on the policies. Yes. So if your director is not following your policy. That's very first. You need to think about yourself.
Emily Knox: How much
Emily Knox: leeway do you have good will with your director? Will this. Put your job in jeopardy. I don't know how to answer that. Do you have a group of staff who agrees with you about this? How do you engage with your director of. With this issue?
Emily Knox: your director should be following the policy.
Emily Knox: and if they are not, then they are actually not doing their job. that is the job of the director to enforce policy to implement policy. So if that is not happening, that's a much larger issue. I would
Emily Knox: think, through where you are in this particular system. And what makes sense for to engage with the director?
Julie Edwards: Thank you. There are so many good questions. I I can tell you right now we're not going to get to all of them. But I am. We are trying because the every single one of them is is excellent. Someone's asked, how would you speak about the Kirk Cameron events this weekend? It seems like they're trying to Co. Opt and disrupt library services by holding story times all over the country.
They're allowed to rent out the rooms, hold their events. But how do we
Julie Edwards: they communicate to the public that these are not library sanctioned events.
Emily Knox: So you communicate to the public that they're not library sanctioned events. Right? You say like this is not a event Kirk Cameron rented this out.
Emily Knox: He has his own point of view. It's not the point of view of the library. I think.
Emily Knox: Let me just say, personally, I think people get very upset about this issue.
Emily Knox: But Kirk Cameron is trying to get you upset about the issue. He is just another person who is renting out your library. All sorts of people get to do it. He gets to do it because other people get to do it. if you are going to make your meeting room open, it needs to open for all to me the response is that
Emily Knox: sounds like we need to do a national rent out the library for people who are against what her camera and says, right people who are for The dignity of every human being who are for traverse books have a read of on. You can even do a redefined during these meetings right? No one has to go. You don't have to go to the meeting.
Emily Knox: you can have alternative programming during it. But I wouldn't
Emily Knox: single this out to say, this is not library sponsored. What do you say for any meeting that is not library sponsored, and that is what you should do for this particular meeting, and then we should also have a response. I'm sorry I was not aware that this was happening across libraries right now. This is What I would say is.
Emily Knox: don't respond in a way that He wants you to.
Emily Knox: Fantastic We. We are right at the top of the hour somebody is asking. I just think this is just like this tells you everything. I'm all you need to know about this presentation. Someone says this was spectacular. Thank you. Can I audit your class at you? I, you see, actually, yes, people can audit my class. I don't know how fall it is but it! People are welcome to audit the class.
Julie Edwards: I love it. Thank you so much. Emily, I I really want to thank you for your expertise and your the attention that you've given to this. This was absolutely phenomenal. Thank you.
Emily Knox: Thank you very much for inviting me.
Julie Edwards: and thank you all so much. for attending. This has been great. I I have seen some great comments in the chat. I can't. I couldn't get to all of them, but I will publish the Chat Transcript so you can all look at that In a few days I'll send you the slides and the recording And hopefully, you've come away from this with some great ideas to bring back into your libraries and communities to
Julie Edwards: keep up the fight for intellectual freedom. Thank you all so much. Have a great afternoon.