Intellectual Freedom: Selected Foundational Documents

Intellectual Freedom is a core value and guiding principle of the library profession in the United States.  It is the antithesis of censorship in all its forms.  As a concept, intellectual freedom is grounded in several basic human and civil rights including the freedoms of speech, the press, expression, thought and belief.  These personal liberties have been addressed historically in several contexts including law, the church, the academy and libraries.  The documents displayed in this exhibit have been selected as foundational in their specific contexts.

In some cases the documents are short and amenable to full display.  In other cases, only particularly relevant sections of much longer works have been included.  In all cases, a citation to the full document is provided for reference. 

This exhibit does not pretend to cover the full range of available texts nor to document the controversies surrounding them and their relationship or applicability one to another.  These are simply the foundational texts of intellectual freedom that explicate its meaning and provide the basis for its advocacy and defenses in private, American, Catholic, university libraries such as the Hesburgh Libraries of the University of  Notre Dame.  These are susceptible to numerous interpretations.

For a detailed explication of the concept of intellectual freedom, the reader is encouraged to explore the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Manual (Chicago, 2006) in the Hesburgh Library Reference Collection Z 711.4 .I57 2006 or to visit and explore the web site of its Office for Intellectual Freedom at http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/Default622.htm.

Site Last Modified: Monday, February 11, 2008

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