LHRT (Library History Round Table)

I'm Amanda Sprochi and I'm the LHRT liaison to the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee. This is the December report.

Llano case: Group is researching other documents to strengthen the justification for Freedom to Read. Supreme Court is expected to announce whether it will take the case or not by December 8.

[Note: The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. The Fifth Circuit ruling that book curation is "government speech" and therefore permits viewpoint-based bans of materials and creates a legal pathway for censorship in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. This creates a circuit split between the 5^th and other circuits which have suggested otherwise. Similar cases are pending in other circuits, and if the rulings go differently the Supreme Court may have to revisit the issue.]

Working group on AI: The first draft of the WG's report will be submitted December 12.

Support Rural Libraries: in a meeting with small rural libraries in Maine, Lori Stockman, the State Librarian, reported that trainings would be more useful if they were asynchronous due to staffing and scheduling difficulties. Basic training on intellectual freedom concepts would be more useful than higher level, current court case information. Many librarians are not comfortable using ALA resources, and it was suggested that going through state chapter websites might be more useful and that an abbreviated version of what ALA sends to state chapters could be utilized. More discussion will be needed in January.

Content controls in Overdrive: The working group is compiling a comparison chart of content controls on major eBook vendor platforms. What controls exist, how they are determined, and whether libraries can remove or adjust controls will be reviewed. Next steps will be determined after the review.

Office of Intellectual Freedom updates: the Information Freedom helpline project launched in October has 14 participating states, but the goal is to have all 50 states participating. There will not be a new edition of "A history of ALA policy on intellectual freedom due to low sales and high production costs. Discussion ensued on whether the IFC could archive future changes and how that would need to happen. A report on recent changes will be posted to ALA Connect before the January meeting.

Law for Librarian IF Symposium: They are soliciting draft arguments to counter the Llano decision. Documents would be peer reviewed and hopefully published to bring attention to the issue.

Discussion on assessment of ALA's Committee on Organizations: The chair of the Committee on Professional Ethics is generally supportive of the committee becoming a subcommittee of the Intellectual Freedom Committee. The IFC is not in favor of the name of the committee being changed from IFC to the Professional Values Committee. It most likely will not go to Council in mid-winter for a decision, and if it did people are asked to speak against it. The clarification was made that is was the Committee on Organizations that proposed the name change.

Liaison reports: ALSC is sunsetting the ALSC Intellectual Freedom Committee with the reunification of ALSC and YALSA. The IF committee will sunset in June and their charge will go the Public Awareness and Policy Committee. The liaison for the Film and Media Round Table asked if libraries were having issues with censorship of film or media. So far it has not been much of an issue. Contact the FMRT if you wish to report.

January and February meeting dates for the IFC will be Tuesday, January 6 from 3:30-4:30 CST and Tuesday, February 3, from 3:30-4:30 CST.

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Amanda Sprochi
Cataloger/Data Wrangler
60 Ellis Library
University of Missouri
520 S 9th St.
Columbia, MO 65211
sprochia@missouri.edu
573/882-0461
She/Her/Hers

The University of Missouri occupies the traditional land of the Osage, Kiikaapoi, Peoria, and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples.
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