Intellectual Freedom

The CFE Library Challenges Database provides access to challenges libraries have faced to items in their collection, and to displays, programs, room usage, and computer access. For each challenge, the database provides information about the challenge, including (1) the item, the nature of the objection, and the requested remedy; (2) (where available) the record of the review of the challenged item undertaken by the library; (3) the library's response.

La base de données des contestations de la bibliothèque du CFE contient les défis auxquels les bibliothèques ont été confrontées concernant des articles de leur collection, leurs affiches, leurs programmes, l’utilisation de leurs locaux et leur accès informatique.

In Ontario, the Upper Canada District School Board has ordered its teachers to stop assigning Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None to students. The school board regards a few references in the mystery novel as anti-Semitic. REPORTAGE

Danielle MacKinlay, a long-time government librarian, is joining the Centre for Free Expression’s Working Group on Intellectual Freedom. Danielle has been Manager, Library Services for the Canadian Coast Guard since 2005. Currently, Danielle is on assignment in the Human Resources Corporate Services within Fisheries and Oceans Canada, as an advisor on employment equity, diversity and inclusion.

Recent news of challenges to books in school and public libraries remind us that book challenges are not uncommon in Canada and, in most cases, are dealt with by the library staff. When the public does hear about a book challenge in a school library learning commons, it is usually where the school policies were not followed and the decision to remove the challenged item was carried out by school officials working outside the bounds of the book-challenge procedures.