Library Bill of Rights
In 1938, as concerns regarding censorship mounted, Spaulding wrote a library bill of rights. He presented it before the Des Moines library board and it was passed by the board as a proclamation that they would not give in to pressures to censor items from their collection. In the State Library of Iowa’s biography Forrest Spaulding it is noted that in 1940 he was challenged regarding his library's copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf. "Spaulding responded by saying that, 'if more people had read Mein Kampf, some of Hitler's despotism might have been prevented.' He maintained that the danger to the United States was not in knowing all about Hitler, but in not knowing all about him. He said 'we should fear the tendency of small minds in these days of stress.’” Spaulding's library bill was later adopted by the American Library Association and continues to remain a strong influence to librarianship today. While the Library Bill of Rights was amended several times by the ALA to account for new media and concerns related to age, the original intent remains, which is, to protect people's right to access information and to use the library.
Read more about this topic: Forrest Spaulding
Famous quotes containing the words library, bill and/or rights:
“That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep forever. Never will I wake these echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again ...”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“It’s true I’ve got no shirts to wear;
It’s true my butcher’s bill is due;
It’s true my prospects all look blue—
But don’t let that unsettle you:”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“My dream is that as the years go by and the world knows more and more of America, it ... will turn to America for those moral inspirations that lie at the basis of all freedom ... that America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)