IFAP Blog

I finally got MLA's IFAP* blog up (click on "IFAP Blog" above to check it out). It needs tweaking, and post topics were somewhat arbitrary (better, I thought, than Lorem Ipsum filler), but it's a start.

The ALA has a wealth of good (and interesting!) information. The hard part will be in deciding what we should include on our MLA blog, and what we should leave out. I posted ALA's list of
"Intellectual Freedom Competencies for Librarians" because, if Intellectual Freedom is - as the ALA claims - a "core value" of the library profession, then librarians should have some idea of what it's all about.

One thing it's about is transparency, though the word has become pretty cliche. Our patrons have a right to know what our policies are, to know what we do with their personal information, and to be alerted when there are changes to the way we do business. We have done a poor job of this, but we are not alone.

Not only have we failed to comment on threats to intellectual freedom, we have gone out of our way to avoid the appearance of having an opinion. Admittedly, with some reason. In politically strained times, we have been afraid to draw any attention to ourselves for fear of offending people whose support we need. But there are ways to inform without offending, and you do it by sticking to the facts and leaving interpretation (or spin) to others.

Now might be a good time to re-examine what intellectual freedom means to us; to ask how the issues have changed over time, and to think about what new IF issues need to be articulated in 2008.

* Intellectual Freedom Advisory Panel