According to this morning’s Inside Higher Ed, The Association of College and Research Libraries [a division of the ALA] has issued an updated list of the top issues facing its members. Among them: … debates about intellectual property rights, demands for free access by the public to information, and a sense by students that they are “customers” of libraries.
The ”list” informs us that
In the 1960s, the Supreme Court ruled in support of legislation that assured the right of Americans to their privacy. Librarians have always recognized the importance of protecting the privacy of library users’ personal records and have informed their communities about the importance of this issue. Most recently, the library profession has opposed relatively recent government laws such as the USA PATRIOT Act that threaten the right to privacy. Some librarians have gone so far as to refuse to comply with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) requests for library patron records (American Libraries, 2006). Becky Albitz (2005) describes the climate of suspicion and mistrust the USA PATRIOT Act has created. In a recent document issued by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, the authors noted that, “according to FBI data, the FBI issued approximately 8,500 National Security Letters (NSLs) in the calendar year 2000, the year prior to the passage of the Patriot Act. . . . The number of NSL requests increased to approximately 39,000 in 2003, approximately 56,000 in 2004, and approximately 47,000 in 2005.” The Office of the Inspector General later stated that these numbers are underreported for various reasons. ALA has publicly criticized the Department of Justice for its use of these letters in libraries. The USA PATRIOT Act was reauthorized in 2006.
You’ll recall that trustee Wagner has labeled the ALA (of which the ACRL is a division) a bunch of “liberal busybodies,” in part because of their stance regarding the Patriot Act. Owing to such "facts," the board has prevented our colleges from membership in the ALA. See Wagner vs. ALA.
