Once again, the Long Arm of the Law session lights the Charleston Conference stage! In the past year, American libraries and educational institutions have seen a new and increasingly vociferous round of book censorship at the local and state levels - almost approaching epidemic proportions. This year's Long Arm of the Law session will explore today's environment, through a framing talk that describes the ever-more problematic landscape and impacts. Speakers will also discuss strategies being developed -- not just protests, but new types of actions. Previous tactics, though well-intentioned, have not accomplished enough, so how do we think and engage differently?
Once again, the Long Arm of the Law session lights the Charleston Conference stage! In the past year, American libraries and educational institutions have seen a new and increasingly vociferous round of book censorship at the local and state levels - almost approaching epidemic proportions. This year's Long Arm of the Law session will explore today's environment, through a framing talk that describes the ever-more problematic landscape and impacts. Speakers will also discuss strategies being developed -- not just protests, but new types of actions. Previous tactics, though well-intentioned, have not accomplished enough, so how do we think and engage differently?
Deborah Caldwell-Stone is the Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and the Executive Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation. For the past two decades, she has worked closely with library workers and trustees to address a wide range of intellectual freedom issues, including book bans, internet censorship, meeting room policies, and the privacy of library users' records.
In addition to directing the work of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, she advises ALA's Intellectual Freedom Committee and its Privacy Subcommittee on law and policy concerns and has served on the faculty of the ALA-sponsored Lawyers for Libraries and Law for Librarians workshops. She has also taught the ALA e-course, “Privacy, Libraries, Patrons, and the Law.” She is a former appellate litigator. She graduated with honors from the Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology.
Ann Okerson serves as the Coordinator off the Offline Internet Consortium. Previous roles have included Senior Advisor on Electronic Strategies at the Center for Research Libraries; Associate University Librarian for Collections & International Programs at Yale University; Coordinator of the NERL consortium; and Senior Program Officer for Scholarly Communications at the Association of Research Libraries.
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