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Intellectual freedom is the right of all people to hold and express opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Intellectual freedom is recognized by the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19, as a basic human right.

Blog September 19, 2023

How to Weed a School Library

There was quite a bit of pearl-clutching recently when it was announced that the Peel District School Board (PDSB) had begun to weed its libraries by removing all books published before 2008. Like a good garden, libraries do need the occasional weeding. The question is, of course, what’s a weed?
Blog May 4, 2022

When a Book by an Eminent Indigenous Author Is Pulled from a School Library, Something is Wrong

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.
Blog October 26, 2021

When politics trumps teachers’ professional judgment, students and society lose

Freedom of Expression is an important foundation of a democratic society and protected as a “fundamental freedom” in Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Yet, in both countries, free expression is being used paradoxically to justify censorship. A disturbing recent example is the enactment of Texas House Bill 3979: “An Act relating to the social studies curriculum in public schools.”
Blog May 19, 2020

Censorship in Canadian Schools

When there is a news report about books being challenged in a school library learning commons, it is often because the item was removed at the direction of the school or district administration following a parent complaint about a specific book and that the proper ‘Request for Reconsideration’ process was not followed.  
Blog April 27, 2020

Should Public Library Boards Embrace Intellectual Freedom as Their Institutional Soul?

I want to first address the fundamental role and value of the public library in Canadian communities – its “value proposition,” grounded in intellectual freedom – and then make a case for intellectual freedom as the institutional soul of the public library. I will review the complexity of intellectual freedom as a boundary and balancing issue and comment on hate speech as a particularly contentious example, concluding with a call for the public library to brand itself as an intellectual freedom champion. (i)