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apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid;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