Libraries function amid complex networks of law, policy, and professional values.  Our professional values emerge in response to legal possibilities and constraints, as well as our ideas about what our profession can and should be.  Our field’s identity as a profession factors in these matters, too.  Intellectual freedom, access to information, and confidentiality of users’ inquiries while respecting creators’ intellectual property are among the ordering principles of library work that intersect with laws created at the state and national levels of government.  The ways we respond to laws and the norms of professional work that are articulated and practiced by librarians form our field’s professional values and policies.

One of the best known statements of national library policy, later adapted and expanded, is the Library Bill of Rights, first approved by the American Library Association in 1939.^[1]  For anyone looking for connections between our field and our state, the original version of the Library Bill of Rights was drafted by Des Moines librarian Forrest Spaulding and enacted there in 1938.  This cornerstone of professional practice was first implemented a little more than a hundred miles from Iowa City.^[2]  Despite its name, the Library Bill of Rights is not constitutional law, although its concept and language is very much derive from that source.  Instead, twentieth-century librarians who worked during a time of considerable political turmoil determined that the freedom to read without restriction or fear of reprisal was integral to the libraries they wanted to create for their communities.  The Library Bill of Rights articulated a professional norm for librarians across the country in a publicly accessible statement, even as the citizens of this country faced threatening and consequential assertions about people’s politics and identities.  It represents our professional commitment to intellectual freedom for library users, both in what we make available to users by opposing censorship and book banning and in protecting the privacy of their choices about their use of library materials.

Although recent news tends to focus on laws that ban any mention of sex in books for young readers, thus conflicting with our professional norms and the broad tenets of library service girded by the Library Bill of Rights, laws support librarians, too.  It is not uncommon to hear people justify libraries as fundamental to a functioning democracy.  The Urban Libraries Council, for example, argues that “The public library, civil society and democracy are intrinsically linked and removing one will erode the rest.”^[3]  As places that support people’s ability to acquire information and to exchange ideas, libraries are often understood as facilitating our use of our First Amendment freedoms, our right to be informed (articulated, too, in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and our right to vote.^[4]  As libraries allow the use of meeting rooms for events, serve as polling places, and circulate materials that express political viewpoints, they are involved in people’s participation in democratic processes.  Understanding the relationships between legal systems, larger declarations of people’s rights, and the workings of libraries is an important professional responsibility.

Because multiple entities create the conditions that govern libraries’ obligations to their users, their employees, and a wider society, the number of voices in this conversation adds to its complexity.  Here we offer a brief and transparent commentary on further big picture aspects of this subject, moving toward a focus on one core area of law that is integral to library operations:  copyright.

As a profession, librarianship creates its own ideas about strong, ethical services.  We call librarianship a profession because we have a distinct body of knowledge and expertise, and we as librarians determine our competencies and responsibilities.  We have formalized documents that articulate these ideas at the national level, under the auspices of the American Library Association, and also at the local level, by working with our cities and our library boards to encode the norms of service for each community.  This said, it is useful to understand a little about the concept of professions.  Andrew Abbott looks at examples of how different professions developed.  A core part of being a profession is being self-regulating – professional roles, rules, values are created by the profession itself, rather than an outside body, even though professions work within the scope of the law.  It is also important to recognize that the concept of professions as we now understand them arose and grew stronger in the late nineteenth century.  Abbott’s famous study of the development of professions in America observes that “For some, the rise of professions is a story of knowledge triumphant in practice.  For others it is a sadder chronicle of monopoly and malfeasance, of unequal justice administered by servants of power ….”^[5]  His fundamental conclusion, that the domains of professional knowledge arise from more than “the contents of professional life,” can direct our attention to the broader contexts that create the ideals guiding our work, including laws.^[6]

For all that we have the rights and privileges of a profession and documents that state our priorities and beliefs about how we work with our communities, these things do not have the same power as laws.  Because of the concept of hierarchy of laws, federal laws, like the U.S. Constitution, exert more authority than those at the state or municipal level.  Policy explains how one functions given extant law; it is an interpretation and a guidance intended to ensure consistency in practice.  Recognizing the difference between law and policy, as well as the importance of consulting attorneys for legal counsel, is a professional responsibility.

The First Amendment is the source of freedom of speech and other fundamental rights in the U.S., and it factors in how librarians understand their users’ rights and their own responsibilities.  In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, advocates have characterized libraries as essential to the exercise of First Amendment freedoms.  Libraries provide information that facilitates speech and writing, as well as documenting and providing platforms for the exercise of these rights.  Particularly since the emergence of the Cold War in the mid-twentieth century, libraries have aligned their work, in broad and varied ways, with democracy, its rights and responsibilities.

The ideas expressed in the Constitution and the work of libraries are also entwined because of intellectual freedom.  Article I of the Constitution supports “the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”^[7]  As we consider our responsibilities to creators and users in the present, it is useful to recognize that the authors of the Constitution believed this clause would offer incentives for people to create new works by ensuring that they could control and profit from that work for a limited number of years.  Subsequent laws, such as the Copyright Term Extension Act (sometimes referred to as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act or the Sonny Bono Act) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, have both extended the duration of copyright and applied it to new media in specialized ways.^[8]  These extensions have led some groups to question the equity of contemporary copyright law and propose new ways to work within it.  Concepts like the Creative Commons, open source content, and copyleft offer new ways to credit users for their creative and technical work, while having fewer restrictions on how others make use of those materials.^[9]  These newer conceptualizations of intellectual property create alternatives to long-standing legal restrictions and to the conventional copyright life cycle through a formalized, legal plan for more extensive reuse permissions.

The Library of Congress has long been the home of the nation’s Copyright Office, a further connection between our field and legal protections for individuals’ creative and technical creations.  The existence of this office and these concepts, though, does not mean that copyright bars all use of others’ intellectual property.  Particularly for librarians and educators  in learning environments, like colleges and universities, Fair Use also enables the limited use of materials protected by copyright.

A short video explanation that reviews the basics of Fair Use has been produced by Library of Congress’s Copyright Office:

The ways our profession and our communities engage with the nature of intellectual property, intellectual freedom, and access to information are both complex and dynamic.  This overview of some core aspects of laws and librarianship interact prefaces a fuller discussion of censorship that will happen in other courses you’ll take during your degree work.  Here we want you to begin to apply and evaluate your knowledge of these concepts in discussions with fellow students.  You’ll be able to share your understanding of the limitations and nuances of these areas of practice, comparing perceptions and potential responses.  You’ll raise questions and consider what additional information or research might lead you to interpret these scenarios differently or more fully.  You’ll hold your discussions in the assigned spaces on ICON, and we’re providing the scenarios below, too, following a response to these ideas.

Your team’s evaluation of these scenarios is hypothetical work as part of a course, with the opportunity to raise questions as well as working toward solutions.  As a librarian, making real-world decisions about these issues will become one of your professional rights and responsibilities.  The major policy statements for which ALA is known, like the Library Bill of Rights and its subsequent amendments, are the work of librarians.  You will have the opportunity and the responsibility to serve on committees to formulate policy within your libraries, on state-level committees, and as a member of national or international library organizations.  In your work with individual library users, you will interpret and enact policies, and sometimes your daily work with individuals will lead you to advocate for policy change.  As a new member of a library association, you might be asked to comment, and later, to vote on new policy statements adopted by the organization.  Importantly, though, you will not make these decisions in isolation, either now or later.

In addition to turning to our librarian colleagues for their advice and experience when we confront questions that are new to us, we also enjoy the support of peers in adjacent disciplines.  Both the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the American Booksellers Association (ABA) share our priorities about preventing book banning and celebrating the freedom to read.  Communicating with our allies and our advocates is also essential to ensuring our core professional values, even – or especially – amid cultural and societal change.

The Scoop On Patron Privacy

Current comments and questions:

The following article explains the ways that technology interacts with patron privacy and library communication.  Although technology has given rise to many new and useful tools for patron engagement, the article introduces the the reader to the ways that technological surveillance during the War on Terror eroded patron privacy.

For an accessible PDF of this article, please click this link.

Starting the Conversation:  A Response by Nancy A. Henke, MA, MLIS (2023)

As I consider the interplay of law, policy, and professional values in librarianship, I’m struck with the ways in which the values of the profession and policy documents like the Library Bill of Rights have endured.  They’ve offered librarians guidance in the context of changing circumstances, and undoubtedly helped many people faced with difficult decisions in their libraries.  And yet I do wonder, are they flexible enough to guide us in the context of changes we cannot foresee – or perhaps even imagine?

Copyright, generative AI, and the digital realities of our world are frequently on my mind.  Consider how libraries have traditionally added books to their collections:  they buy or are given titles, which the library then owns and gives them the right to lend them to patrons for as long as they enhance the collection (and, practically speaking, as long as they hold up).

But e-books are different.  Libraries pay license fees to be able to lend the titles to patrons, and usually those license terms allow for either a specific number of circulations (e.g., 26 or 52) or a specific amount of time (e.g., 18 months) before the license must be purchased again.  To stretch collection funds further, some libraries have adopted alternative lending models for digital titles, like controlled digital lending, to avoid paying (and repaying) expensive license fees for content.  And yet the legality of this approach has been debated.

The rise of generative AI, trained on incomprehensibly large datasets, will undoubtedly cause upheaval with copyright law in the coming years.  As of this writing there are many lawsuits – from authors, from artists, and from companies – that have yet to be decided but all of which revolve around the legality of using copyrighted texts and images to train algorithms without consent of the creator.  How will this affect copyright law?  How will it affect libraries?  And will it cause tension with other library values, like our commitment to equal and equitable access?  AI will also lead to more ethical conundrums within libraries, as some of the scenarios below will demonstrate.

The Library Bill of Rights has guided us for close to nine decades, yet the history of libraries shows that what libraries are, what they do, and what they see as their obligation to their patrons and their communities is not static.  I wonder, are the core values of librarianship and the Library Bill of Rights flexible enough to respond to the changes we will face in the next century, or will these guiding principles themselves need to change as well?

Continuing the Conversation:  A Response by Corey Epley (Libraries, Culture, and Society, Fall 2023)

As described by Matt Finch in his wonderfully named speech titled Stealing Fire from the Gods, “Libraries are innately subversive institutions born of the radical notion that every single member of society deserves free, high-quality access to knowledge and culture.”  When we first read about intellectual freedom on the ALA’s website, I was struck by this quote.^[10]  When I applied to library school, the last thing I expected was for it to feel revolutionary.  I have long been aware of the idea that knowledge is power.  Being a lifetime reader and choosing to study English at the U of I made me particularly cognizant of this fact.  But I never considered the idea in practice, what exactly this manifestation of power would look like.  My fuzzy idea to go into Public Librarianship has evolved into a calling and desire to stand for something.  This semester’s course of study has deepened my commitment to protecting the transformative resources that libraries provide.

Library resources are more than transformative in the sense that they transform the communities they serve, but they have also transformed in format, or popular convention and implementation over time.  In our timeline project, our group researched in depth the many and varied resources a library can provide, and how their changing definitions shaped what a library is and can be.  As described in the first chapter of our OER textbook, gone are the days of a young boy wanting to read Treasure Island, who gets a biography of William Jennings Bryan and his cross of gold instead.  “Until well into the twentieth century, it was not uncommon for professional librarians to decide that they knew better than library users did what the latter needed, just one example of how our professional values change over time.”^[11]  Nowadays local public libraries should be taking their cue from community needs.  “Certainly, we want to consider the cues of the library user in front of us, asking for our help and to ask them questions that will bring their needs to the front of our interaction.”^[12]  Principal in my charge as a future library and information science professional is to listen to library patrons.  If I see a way to better serve, it is my job to implement and adjust it over time.  There are many ways that libraries have risen to meet the changing needs of the communities they inhabit.  Many more still are the ways librarians have re-defined what their own purpose is.  My clarity of purpose as a future library professional has grown a lot over the last few months; from my understanding of what a library was, to what a library is, to what a library can and should be.

It is important to consider the symbiotic relationship between Librarians and their patrons.  I wish to be a public servant.  Most important should be the community members I serve.  And in helping one another, this spirit of collaboration gives way to a whole new perspective of the space we occupy together.  A library is more than the sum of its parts — walls, windows, or doors.  According to James Elmborg, libraries occupy something known as a Third Space:

“Third Space provides a concept whereby people with less obvious social, political, or military power can still exert influence on space by resisting the represented structures of dominant cultures.  They do so by simply occupying space and appropriating it for their own purposes.  They carry with them social and cultural borderlands that create the need for negotiation and the refashioning of meaning.”^[13]

As library professionals we get to play an important role in the act of becoming.  We help our patrons become a better version of themself; more knowledgeable, better informed of their resources and rights, and obtaining more support to help navigate the many systems that hold dominion in our society.  Alongside us, our patrons help create the library space, define its purpose, and assign meaning to its many and discrete parts.  Every person, regardless of identity or circumstance, finds a home, refuge, and is welcomed in all libraries, should they choose to visit, and even if they do not.  Access to what is available, and who it was available to, steadily grows to include more identities every day.  But this process hasn’t been a steady, continual growth.  There have been both leaps and setbacks.  These library resources should be freely and equitably available to all people, including the adaptable, renewable resource of the libraries themselves.

This access is contentious among some, as evidenced by recent record-breaking numbers of censorship attempts.  The ALA lists 1,269 challenges in 2022 alone, nearly double the 729 of 2021.^[14]  The top 10 most banned books list includes works by LGBTQ authors, Black authors, and other marginalized perspectives on a wide range of vital topics, considered to be not allowed by some.  Unfortunately, this exclusion of diverse voices came to fruition with House, and then Senate File 496 that was signed into law by our Governor in May of 2023.  While its enforcement does not start until January of 2024, I’ve felt its weight in many aspects of my study this semester.  When reading about the conception and implementation of the Library Bill of Rights, which advocates for intellectual freedom provisions I, II, and II, we learned that they are now in conflict with Iowa law.  These three provisions inform my understanding of what a library should stand for and provide.  First and foremost, “Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.”^[15]  Libraries should not be made to censor materials because they may be informed by different Racial, Cultural, Gender, or LGBTQ perspectives.  “…Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”^[16]  Just because a vocal minority determines these materials to be inflammatory, incendiary, or explicit, does not mean these materials should be removed from collections.  “Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.”^[17] Here then is the revolutionary purpose I seek to understand, the concrete applications of the power that knowledge provides.  In my statement of purpose when I first applied to library school, I discussed my desire to locate and champion artifacts of belonging; materials that could make someone feel like they can be the hero of more than that story, but their own life story.  There is an important consideration that I did not articulate then; the mold to which every standard is compared was made in my image.  There were always characters in books and media that look like me.  This has not been the case for others.  My experience is completely different from someone who is a person of color.  While my sexual orientation and gender expression does not conform to typical societal conventions, this is largely invisible aside from atypical pronouns in an email signature.  That lived experience of racial difference is something I can never truly understand.

Another important consideration is that equal access is distinct from equity:  “Equality is about, to yield fairness, we treat everyone the same.  It’s an entrenchment of sameness.  And we know, who know from the law, that treating everyone the same has an adverse impact on people who come from marginalized communities because not everyone starts in the same place.”^[18]  The idea is that equity, and not equality, recognizes the day to day that marginalized people experience.  It is necessary to acknowledge the current realities we face, as they have been historically informed by discrimination.  As described in his Brief but Spectacular Take on Advocating for Equity in the School System, discrimination has always been present, just changing forms over time:  “From slavery, onto Jim Crow, onto redlining and the G.I. Bill only being given to certain groups and not others, and then, if you fast-forward to now, we have mass incarceration, we have the war on drugs that’s disproportionately impacting other communities.”^[19]  As a SLIS student, learning about the history that has contributed to inequity and injustice is a good first step.  Challenges against Intellectual Freedom can come from a place of ignorance, but they are still rooted in the systemic racism that is endemic in American society.  In today’s world, it’s unfortunate but true to say that considering this and other aspects of Critical Race Theory that can be considered dangerous or wrong.  I do not seek contrition, instead I seek little acts of rebellion that contradict ignorance or hatred.  Instead of Matt Finch’s image of stealing fire from gods, I propose another:  I am a part of a profession that seeks to provide its own heat – in its drive, passion, and power of purpose – like an ever-rising phoenix remaking itself again and again.

Scenarios for Discussion:^[20]

Discussion spaces for your small groups have been established on ICON.  The first post in each group will be by me, indicating which scenarios your group has been assigned.  With the members of your small group, you will discuss librarians’ responsibilities and potential actions in response to these scenarios.  We’ll later share some information and ideas as a class, so that you can see how people outside your group responded to these professional dilemmas.

1. A faculty member wants to include copyrighted images from various sources in their lecture slides, but they are unsure about the copyright implications.  How should the library’s subject specialist advise this faculty member?
2. A community group wants the library to host a film screening for the community at the library, but they are unsure about the copyright requirements.  Should the library be concerned about the group’s plans?
3. A library is considering digitizing and making available certain out-of-print books from their collection online.  Library staff are preparing a grant to support this project.  What do they need to do to be sure they are not violating copyright law, thus jeopardizing the project?
4. A library discovers that a patron has been using its technology to make unauthorized PDFs of entire textbook chapters and distribute them to other students.  What are the library’s responsibilities in this situation?
5. A library wants to create a digital archive of local newspapers.  What must the project leads do with regard to the copyright status of older editions?
6.  A library’s digital repository contains user-generated content, such as student research papers, that may include copyrighted material like images, photographs, and works of art without proper permissions.
7. A library patron requests assistance with creating mashups or remixes using copyrighted music, videos, and other media.  How do you respond?
8.  A library discovers that a staff member has been illegally sharing copyrighted digital materials with library patrons, resulting in potential copyright infringement.  What should the library do?
9. A library patron approaches you and asks for information about another patron who has borrowed a specific book.  They claim to be a relative of the person and are worried about their well-being.  What do you tell this patron?
10. Alex, a librarian at the primary service desk, receives a court order requesting access to a patron’s borrowing history and computer usage logs.  The patron in question is suspected of illegal activities, but Alex doesn’t know whether the court order provides sufficient evidence to justify breaching the patron’s confidentiality.  What is Alex supposed to do in this situation?
11. Karen, a librarian, is responsible for leading a team that is charged with implementing an AI-powered recommender system in the library’s online catalog.  The system uses machine learning algorithms to suggest books to patrons based on their reading history and preferences.  However, after a news story about the new recommender system, some patrons express concerns about the system potentially reinforcing biases or limiting their exposure to diverse perspectives.  How should the library respond?
12. Doris, a librarian, is approached by a vendor offering an AI solution that claims to improve library services by analyzing patron data collected through library systems.  However, there are concerns about the ethical use and protection of patron data, particularly regarding privacy and data security.  How should Doris advise the library to proceed?

Resources for Further Reading, Listening, and Viewing

The Cold War, Crash Course US History #37. 2013. Complexly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C72ISMF_D0.

Henke, Nancy. “Copyright and Open Licenses: A Unit for LIS Students.” December 5, 2023. https://oercommons.org/courses/copyright-and-open-licenses-a-unit-for-lis-students/.

“Examining Free Expression and Protecting the Marginalized.” The Bryan Lehrer Show, May 8, 2023. https://www.wnyc.org/story/examining-free-expression-and-protecting-marginalized.

“How to Spot a Communist.” Armed Forces Information Film No. 5, 1950. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkYl_AH-qyk.

Johnson, Maureen. “I Promise ….” TikTok video. July 13, 2023. https://www.tiktok.com/@maureenjohnsonbooks/video/7255426312058178858.

McLeod, Kembrew. Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property. University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

Obama, Barack. “Thank You to America’s Librarians for Protecting Our Freedom to Read.” Medium, July 17, 2023. https://barackobama.medium.com/thank-you-to-americas-librarians-for-protecting-our-freedom-to-read-80ce373608b3.

Robbins, Louise. The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown: Civil Rights, Censorship, and the American Library. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.

United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.

Whitmire, Kyle. “Whitmire: Why Was an Alabama Library Director Fired? Read Between the Lines.” Al.com, March 20, 2024. https://www.al.com/news/2024/03/whitmire-why-was-an-alabama-library-director-fired-read-between-the-lines.html.

Footnotes

---