In this blogger's humble opinion (ITBHO), the American Library Association needs a new award for courageous opposition to book-banning. Admittedly, the ALA already awards the The Paul Howard Award for Courage "...consisting of $1,000 and a 24k gold-framed citation of achievement honoring a librarian, library board, library group, or an individual who has exhibited unusual courage for the benefit of library programs or services." The ALA also confers the "...Gordon M. Conable Award [which honors] a public library staff member, a library trustee, or a public library that has demonstrated a commitment to intellectual freedom and the Library Bill of Rights." However, a Judith Krug Award is in order to recognize a significant defender of books and the free exchange of ideas as well as opposition to book-banning. This blogger has made an inquiry with the ALA and if such an award is in the offing, that news will be posted to this blog. If this is (fair & balanced) admiration for a bookwoman, so be it.
[Vannevar Bush Hyperlink — Bracketed Numbers — Directory]
[1] Judith Krug (1940-2009)
[2] An Appreciation Of Judith Krug
[x NY Fishwrap]
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Judith Krug, Who Fought Ban On Books, Dies At 69
By Douglas Martin
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Judith F. Krug, who led the campaign by libraries against efforts to ban books, including helping found Banned Books Week, then fought laws and regulations to limit children’s access to the Internet, died Saturday in Evanston, Ill. She was 69.
The cause was stomach cancer, her son, Steven, said.
As the American Library Association’s official proponent of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech since the 1960s, Ms. Krug (pronounced kroog) fought the banning of books, including Huckleberry Finn, Mein Kampf, Little Black Sambo, Catcher in the Rye, and sex manuals. In 1982, she helped found Banned Books Week, an annual event that includes authors reading from prohibited books.
She also fought for the inclusion of literature on library shelves that she herself found offensive, like “The Blue Book” of the ultraconservative John Birch Society. The book is a transcript of a two-day monologue by Robert Welch at the founding meeting of the society in 1958.
“My personal proclivities have nothing to do with how I react as a librarian,” Ms. Krug said in an interview with The New York Times in 1972. “Library service in this country should be based on the concept of intellectual freedom, of providing all pertinent information so a reader can make decisions for himself.”
In 1967, Ms. Krug became director of the library association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, which promotes intellectual freedom in libraries. In 1969, she was appointed executive director of its Freedom to Read Foundation, which raises money to further First Amendment issues in court cases.
The issues have changed over time. In December 1980, Ms. Krug’s observation that complaints about the content of books in public libraries had increased fivefold in the month since Ronald Reagan was elected president was widely reported. In an interview with The Times, she said that many of the complainants identified themselves as members of Moral Majority, a strongly conservative group, but the Rev. George A. Zarris, chairman of Moral Majority in Illinois, denied there was any organized effort.
But the situation illustrated a frequent conflict in issues over library censorship. Ms. Krug pushed what she often described as a pure view of the First Amendment against what her opponents often said was the democratic will.
“What the library associations are trying to do is make the voice of the people null and void,” said Nancy Czerwiec, a former primary school teacher who led the fight to ban a sex education book from the Oak Lawn Library in Illinois.
That controversy was settled when the library agreed to lend the book only to adults.
Ms. Krug later became a leader in fighting censorship on the Internet, an issue taken up by libraries because many people with no computers at home use library computers. The question involved not just a limited number of books for a particular library’s shelves, but efforts to keep theoretically unlimited amounts of indecent material from children by means of technological filters.
In 1997, an alliance of civil liberties groups, with Ms. Krug a principal organizer, persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down the indecency provisions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
Jerry Berman, founder and chairman of the Center for Democracy & Technology, which promotes free speech on the Internet, said in a statement, “Her legacy rests in the constitutional challenge that secured the free speech rights for the Internet that we exercise today.”
More recently, Ms. Krug fiercely fought a provision in the USA Patriot Act that allows federal investigators to peruse library records of who has read what. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft dismissed protests about the law as “baseless hysteria.”
Judith Rose Fingeret was born in Pittsburgh on March 15, 1940, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and earned a master’s degree in library science from the University of Chicago. She worked as a librarian at the University of Chicago and elsewhere before joining the library association as a research analyst.
In addition to her son, Ms. Krug is survived by her husband, Herbert; her daughter, Michelle Litchman; five grandchildren; her two brothers; and her sister.
Ms. Krug credited her parents as inspiring her passion for free expression. In 2002, she told The Chicago Tribune about reading a sex-education book under the covers with a flashlight when she was 12.
“It was a hot book; I was just panting,” she said, when her mother suddenly threw back the bed covers and asked what she was doing. Judith timidly held up the book.
“She said, ‘For God’s sake, turn on your bedroom light so you don’t hurt your eyes.’ And that was that,” Ms. Krug said. ♥
[Douglas Martin is an obituary writer for the NY Fishwrap.]
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[x NY Fishwrap]
Judith Krug
By Dorothy Samuels
Tag Cloud of the following article
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a librarian is a person who specializes “in the care or management of a library.” That definition is far too mechanical. It leaves out the larger role librarians play in our democracy, facilitating access to information and ideas and promoting and protecting a precious First Amendment right: the freedom to read.
No one took that role more seriously than Judith Krug, the trained librarian and director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom for more than four decades, who died Saturday at age 69. Defending the freedom to read from damaging assaults by censors in and out of government was her life’s work.
In a 2002 talk, Ms. Krug explained that the role of librarians is to bring people and information together. “We do this by making sure libraries have information and ideas across the spectrum of social and political thought, so people can choose what they want to read or view or listen to. Some users find materials in their local library collection to be untrue, offensive, harmful or even dangerous. But libraries serve the information needs of all of the people in the community — not just the loudest, not just the most powerful, not even just the majority. Libraries serve everyone.”
Ms. Krug assisted countless local librarians and library trustees dealing with objections to library materials. She waged principled legal battles challenging both book and Internet censorship in libraries all the way to the Supreme Court. She stood up against an insidious portion of the 2001 Patriot Act that allowed government officials broad access to confidential library records and to secretly monitor what people read.
In 1982, during one of the nation’s periodic censorship epidemics, Ms. Krug established Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of authors, their literature and the Constitution’s system of free expression. She found reassurance in the perennial appearance of works like J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men on the American Library Association’s list of the 10 most frequently challenged library books. “That means that censors, real and would-be, are not making the headway they think they are,” she said. “Books that matter are still in libraries.” ♥
[A member of The Times editorial board since 1984, Dorothy Samuels writes on a wide array of legal and social policy issues. Prior to joining The Times, she briefly practiced corporate law with a big Wall Street firm, leaving there to pursue her interests in public policy and journalism. For four years, Samuels served as executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the largest affiliate of the national ACLU. In 2001, in a change of pace, she published a comic novel, Filthy Rich. Samuels is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and Northeastern University School of Law.]
Copyright © 2009 The New York Times Company
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