little miss adventures

1A


I took LIBR 200 Information and Society in my first semester of the SJSU SLIS program. During this class, we learned a great deal about the ethics, values and foundational principles of library and information professionals and their role in the promotion of intellectual freedom, both from class lectures and reading assignments. Our textbook and lectures gave a thorough historical perspective of the library profession, which gave me a strong basis of the foundational principles of the field. We talked in length about the ethics and values of the profession and the importance of upholding them. Since then, I have ingrained these ethics and values in my professional philosophy and applied them in my coursework and my day-to-day professional life.
Librarianship’s ethics, in combination with the foundational principles and values, are largely concerned with intellectual freedom: making sure information remains democratically available to all patrons, and protecting their interests from undue scrutiny. The American Library Association, of which I am an active member, very vocally protects the rights of library users and librarians. Their Office of Intellectual Freedom website houses a collection of statements and policies that outlines the stance that libraries that endorse the policies hold. When I developed a collection development policy for a fictional small public library for LIBR 266 Collection Development, I turned to the ALA website and included many of our primary professional association’s policies that delineate our professional stance on intellectual freedom.
Another issue of major importance to librarians related to intellectual freedom, especially those who wish to serve children and young adults like I do, is that of censorship. As librarians, it is our responsibility to protect our collections from censorship and to stand up against book challenges from those in the community who wish to restrict access to certain material based on their own personal agendas. For my research paper in 200, I wrote about the history of censorship in children’s and young adult books, particularly in regards to J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter series, which tops the list of the most challenged books from 2000-2005.