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 These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the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.
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom announced its sponsorship of “Let’s Encrypt,†a free, automated, and open certificate authority. “Let’s Encrypt†is a service provided by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) and is run for the public’s benefit. It will allow anyone who owns a domain name – including libraries – to obtain a server certificate at zero cost, making it possible to encrypt data communications between servers and provide greater security for those using the internet for email, browsing, or other online tasks.
Freedom of speech campaigners hit back as a recent poll reveals an increasing appetite among US adults for banning books and restricting children’s access to ‘inappropriate’ library books
Dav Pilkey’s bestselling Captain Underpants books have been pulled from the shelves and out of children’s hands for being ‘inappropriate’ and ‘anti-establishment’. Here’s why that’s so wrong.
