Intellectual Freedom

I've been gone to a teacher's conference since Wed. afternoon and I am exhausted (in a good way!) but I wanted to post about this. Judith Krug, head of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual freedom has died. I heard this while listening to this story.
Robert Doyle, Executive Director of the Illinois Library Association, described her this way:

"She was an articulate, irrepressible voice for the First Amendment, and certainly an unforgettable force within the library profession. And I would say that an entire generation of librarians committed to the First Amendment -- what the library profession refers to as intellectual freedom -- was really forged and shaped by Judith Krug."

Never thought about intellectual freedom? Every time you checked out a library book without worrying that someone was monitoring what you read, every time you heard a lecture that made you think from a professor whose viewpoint was out of the mainstream, every time you read a banned book, you were exercising your intellectual freedom.

It could be as seemingly unimportant as a preteen reading sex books in the library stacks (been there, done that!), or as monumental as our nation's students reading Huckleberry Finn or Grapes of Wrath in high school and college literature classes. So, in honor of our intellectual freedom, read a banned or challenged book. (Notice that they are not all old books, book banning and challenging continues. ALA makes a new list every year!)

Celebrate the freedom to learn and think without restrictions. Honor Judith Krug by thinking freely!