Intellectual Freedom Statement

An Interpretation of the LIBRARY BILL OF RIGHTS

The heritage of free men is ours.

In the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution, the founders

of our nation proclaimed certain fundamental freedoms to be essential

to our form of government. Primary among these is the freedom of

expression, specifically the right to publish diverse opinions and the

right to unrestricted access to those opinions. As citizens committed

to the full and free use of all communications media and as

professional persons responsible for making the content of those media

accessible to all without prejudice, we, the undersigned, wish to

assert the public interest in the preservation of freedom of

expression. Through continuing judicial interpretations of the First

Amendment to the United States Constitution, freedom of expression has

been guaranteed. Every American who aspires to the success of our

experiment in democracy -- who has faith in the political and social

integrity of free men -- must stand firm on those Constitutional

guarantees of essential rights. Such Americans can be expected to

fulfill the responsibilities implicit in those rights.

We, therefore, affirm these propositions:

1. We will make available to everyone who needs or desires them the

widest possible diversity of views and modes of expression, including

those which are strange, unorthodox or unpopular.

Creative thought is, by its nature, new. New ideas are always

different and, to some people, distressing and even threatening. The

creator of every new idea is likely to be regarded as unconventional

-- occasionally heretical -- until his idea is first examined, then

refined, then tested in its political. social or moral applications.

The characteristic ability of our governmental system to adapt to

necessary change is vastly strengthened by the option of the people to

choose freely from among conflicting opinions. To stifle nonconformist

ideas at their inception would be to end the democratic process. Only

through continuous weighing and selection from among opposing views

can free individuals obtain the strength needed for intelligent,

constructive decisions and actions. In short, we need to understand

not only what we believe, but why we believe as we do.

2. We need not endorse every idea contained in the materials we

produce and make available.

We serve the educational process by disseminating the knowledge and

wisdom required for the growth of the mind and the expansion of

learning. For us to employ our own political, moral, or esthetic views

as standards for determining what materials are published or

circulated conflicts with the public interest. We cannot foster true

education by imposing on others the structure and content of our own

opinions. We must preserve and enhance the people's right to a broader

range of ideas than those held by any librarian or publisher or church

or government. We hold that it is wrong to limit any person to those

ideas and that information another believes to be true, good, and

proper.

3. We regard as irrelevant to the acceptance and distribution of any

creative work the personal history or political affiliations of the

author or others responsible for it or its publication.

A work of art must be judged solely on its own merits. Creativity

cannot flourish if its appraisal and acceptance by the community is

influenced by the political views or private lives of the artists or

the creators. A society that allows blacklists to be compiled and used

to silence writers and artists cannot exist as a free society.

4. With every available legal means, we will challenge laws or

governmental action restricting or prohibiting the publication of

certain materials or limiting free access to such materials.

Our society has no place for legislative efforts to coerce the taste

of its members, to restrict adults to reading matter deemed suitable

only for children, or to inhibit the efforts of creative persons in

their attempts to achieve artistic perfection. When we prevent serious

artists from dealing with truth as they see it, we stifle creative

endeavor at its source. Those who direct and control the intellectual

development of our children -- parents, teachers, religious leaders,

scientists, philosophers, statesman -- must assume the responsibility

for preparing young people to cope with life as it is and to face the

diversity of experience to which they will be exposed as they mature.

This is an affirmative responsibility that cannot be discharged

easily, certainly not with the added burden of curtailing one's access

to art, literature, and opinion. Tastes differ. Taste, like morality,

cannot be controlled by government, for governmental action, devised

to suit the demands of one group, thereby limits the freedom of all

others.

5. We oppose labeling any work of literature or art, or any persons

responsible for its creation, as subversive, dangerous, or otherwise

undesirable.

Labeling attempts to predispose users of the various media of

communication, and to ultimately close off a path to knowledge.

Labeling rests on the assumption that persons exist who have a special

wisdom, and who, therefore, can be permitted to determine what will

have good and bad effects on other people. But freedom of expression

rests on the premise of ideas vying in the open marketplace for

acceptance, change, or rejection by individuals. Free men choose this

path.

6.We as guardians of intellectual freedom oppose and will resist

every encroachment upon that freedom by individuals or groups, private

or official.

It is inevitable in the give-and-take of the democratic process that

the political, moral and esthetic preferences of a person or group

will conflict occasionally with those of others. A fundamental premise

of our free society is that each citizen is privileged to decide those

opinions to which he will adhere or which he will recommend to the

members of a privately organized group or association. But no private

group may usurp the law and impose its own political or moral concepts

upon the general public. Freedom cannot be accorded only to selected

groups for it is then transmuted into privilege and unwarranted

license.

7.Both as citizens and professionals. we will strive by all

legitimate means open to us to be relieved of the threat of personal,

economic, and legal reprisals resulting from our support and defense

of the principles of intellectual freedom.

Those who refuse to compromise their ideals in support of intellectual

freedom have often suffered dismissals from employment, forced

resignations, boycotts of products and establishments, and other

invidious forms of punishment. We perceive the admirable, often

lonely, refusal to succumb to threats of punitive action as the

highest form of true professionalism: dedication to the cause of

intellectual freedom and the preservation of vital human and civil

liberties.

In our various capacities, we will actively resist incursions against the full exercise of our professional responsibility for creating and maintaining an intellectual environment which fosters unrestrained creative endeavor and true freedom of choice and access for all members of the community.

We state these propositions with conviction, not as easy generalizations. We advance a noble claim for the value of ideas, freely expressed, as embodied in books and other kinds of communications. We do this in our belief that a free intellectual climate fosters creative endeavors capable of enormous variety, beauty, and usefulness. and thus worthy of support and preservation.

We recognize that application of these propositions may encourage the dissemination of ideas and forms of expression that will be frightening or abhorrent to some. We believe that what people read, view, and hear is a critically important issue. We recognize, too, that ideas can be dangerous. It may be, however, that they are effectually dangerous only when opposing ideas are suppressed.

Freedom, in its many facets, is a precarious course. We espouse it heartily.

Adopted by the ALA Council,

June 25, 1971

Endorsed by the FREEDOM TO READ FOUNDATION.

Board of Trustees

June 18, 1971

[Made available by permission of the American Library Association.]