Marathon County Public Library

ITEM NUMBER: 4.31 a-e

CHAPTER 4: Library

Statements

CODE: Policy

COMPUTER ID: LS-ST-2



Title: The Freedom to Read.

Effective Date: 11-24-86

Authorized By: Library Board of Trustees

Date of Last Review: 7-2013



THE FREEDOM TO READ



The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private

groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit

access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label "controversial" views, to

distribute lists of "objectionable" books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions

apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid;

that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national

security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as

individuals devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for

disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to

read.



Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy:

that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject

the bad. We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make

their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not believe they are

prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be "protected" against what

others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and

expression.



These efforts at suppression are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought

against education, the press, art and images, films, broadcast media, and the Internet. The

problem is not only one of actual censorship. The shadow of fear cast by these pressures

leads, we suspect, to an even larger voluntary curtailment of expression by those who seek

to avoid controversy or unwelcome scrutiny by government officials.



Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of accelerated change. And

yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of social tension. Freedom

has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain. Freedom keeps open the path

of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of

a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of

our society and leaves it the less able to deal with controversy and difference.



ITEM NUMBER: 4.31b





Now as always in our history, reading is among our greatest freedoms. The freedom to

read and write is almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of

expression that can initially command only a small audience. The written word is the

natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original

contributions to social growth. It is essential to the extended discussion that serious

thought requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge and ideas into organized

collections.



We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a

creative culture. We believe that these pressures toward conformity present the danger of

limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our

culture depend. We believe that every American community must jealously guard the

freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read. We

believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility to give validity to that

freedom to read by making it possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of

offerings. The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith in free

people will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise

the responsibilities that accompany these rights.



We therefore affirm these propositions:



1. 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 or

considered dangerous by the majority.



Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new

thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and tested. Totalitarian systems attempt to

maintain themselves in power by the ruthless suppression of any concept that challenges

the established orthodoxy. The power of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly

strengthened by the freedom of its citizens to choose widely from among conflicting

opinions offered freely to them. To stifle every nonconformist idea at birth would mark the

end of the democratic process. Furthermore, only through the constant activity of weighing

and selecting can the democratic mind attain the strength demanded by times like these.

We need to know not only what we believe but why we believe it.



2. Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea or

presentation they make available. It would conflict with the public interest for them

to establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as a standard for

determining what should be published or circulated.



Publishers and librarians serve the educational process by helping to make available

knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind and the increase of learning.

They do not foster education by imposing as mentors the patterns of their own thought.

ITEM NUMBER: 4.31c





The people should have the freedom to read and consider a broader range of ideas than

those that may be held by any single librarian or publisher or government or church. It is

wrong that what one can read should be confined to what another thinks proper.



3. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to bar access to

writings on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author.



No art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the political views or private lives of

its creators. No society of free people can flourish that draws up lists of writers to whom it

will not listen whatever they may have to say.



4. There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine

adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts

of writers to achieve artistic expression.



To some, much of modern expression is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking?

We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from dealing with the stuff of life.

Parents and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of

experiences in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a responsibility to help them

learn to think critically for themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be

discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet

prepared. In these matters values differ, and values cannot be legislated; nor can

machinery be devised that will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom

of others.



5. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept the prejudgment of a label

characterizing any expression or its author as subversive or dangerous.



The ideal of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to

determine by authority what is good or bad for the others. It presupposes that individuals

must be directed in making up their minds about the ideas they examine. But Americans

do not need others to do their thinking for them.



6. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as guardians of the people's

freedom to read, to contest encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or

groups seeking to impose their own standards or tastes upon the community at

large; and by the government whenever it seeks to reduce or deny public access to

public information.



It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political, the moral, or

the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with those of

another individual or group. In a free society individuals are free to determine for

themselves what they wish to read, and each group is free to determine what it will

recommend to its freely associated members. But no group has the right to take the law

ITEM NUMBER: 4.31d





into its own hands, and to impose its own concept of politics or morality upon other

members of a democratic society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the

accepted and the inoffensive. Further, democratic societies are more safe, free, and

creative when the free flow of public information is not restricted by governmental

prerogative or self-censorship.



7. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom

to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and

expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, they can demonstrate

that the answer to a "bad" book is a good one, the answer to a "bad" idea is a good

one.



The freedom to read is of little consequence when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for

that reader's purpose. What is needed is not only the absence of restraint, but the positive

provision of opportunity for the people to read the best that has been thought and said.

Books are the major channel by which the intellectual inheritance is handed down, and the

principal means of its testing and growth. The defense of the freedom to read requires of

all publishers and librarians the utmost of their faculties, and deserves of all Americans the

fullest of their support.



We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations. We here stake out

a lofty claim for the value of the written word. We do so because we believe that it is

possessed of enormous variety and usefulness, worthy of cherishing and keeping free. We

realize that the application of these propositions may mean the dissemination of ideas and

manners of expression that are repugnant to many persons. We do not state these

propositions in the comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant. We believe

rather that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the

suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of

life, but it is our.



This statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester Conference of the

American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which in 1970

consolidated with the American Educational Publishers Institute to become the Association

of American Publishers.





ITEM NUMBER: 4.31e





Adopted June 25, 1953, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee;

amended

January 28, 1972; January 16, 1991; July 12, 2000; June 30, 2004





A Joint Statement by: American Library Association

Association of American Publishers







Subsequently Endorsed by:



American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression

The Association of American University Presses, Inc.

The Children's Book Council

Freedom to Read Foundation

National Association of College Stores

National Coalition Against Censorship

National Council of Teachers of English

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression