03.04C Library Policy Manual Revision

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PEQUOT LAKE5 COMMUNITY LIBRARY BOARD POLICY FREEDOM TO READ Effective June 1,2004 Confirmed: June 20,2017 The Pequot Lakes Library Board endorses the following American Library Association Freedom to Read statement. The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under atta,ck. 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to purge libraries.These actions apparently rise from a view that our national ttradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the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. T`he 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. 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 13 ,