Intellectual Freedom Committee Report

Intellectual Freedom Committee Report

State of the States May 16, 2016 online meeting hosted by the Office of Intellectual Freedom

Intellectual Freedom Roundtable Chair – The IFRT program at ALA Annual conference will be on academic freedom Saturday June 25 1-2:30. The IFRT social and award ceremony will be Saturday June 25 7-9pm at the Hyatt Regency Bayhill 17 and will be held in conjunction with the Merritt Humanitarian Fund. No one was nominated for the Hodges award, this is an award that library chapters like the New Mexico Library Association can give: http://www.ala.org/ifrt/awardsfinal/hodges/hodges

All Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) programs at ALA can be seen here: http://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=6643

Banned Books Week items are for sale at the ALA store: http://www.alastore.ala.org/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=269

The focus of Banned Books week this year will be on diversity. Diversity is often “silenced” because the publishers publishing diverse books are not the mainstream presses. September 27 will be a Night of Silent Voices when bookstores around the US will be bringing in high profile small booksellers to be part of Banned Books Week.

The OIF is working on an initiative called New Voices – independent book sellers are publishing diverse books that aren’t making their way to the library. More information will be coming at the Annual Conference.

OIF is creating a Book Camp on intellectual freedom for pre-conferences for chapters.

Choose Privacy Week happens every year is May 1-7. Information about past events and events for future weeks can be found here: https://chooseprivacyweek.org/

Two upcoming webinars:

Intellectual Freedom and Minors May 26, 2016: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intellectual-freedom-and-minors

Intellectual Freedom for ALL June 15, 2016: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/webinar-intellectual-freedom-for-all

Link to a proposal form if you are interested in presenting on an issue related to intellectual freedom: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intellectual-freedom-elearning

A new toolkit has been issued by ALA for GLBTQ books and issues: "Open to All: Serving the GLBT Community in Your Library"

The OIF blog is active at: http://www.oif.ala.org/oif

Sign up for the OIF newsletter here: http://ala.informz.net/ala/profile.asp?fid=3430

Next Meeting will be Thursday August 18 10am CST (9am MNT)

Respectfully Submitted,

Valerie Nye

Intellectual Freedom Committee

June 13, 2016