Loudoun County Trustees
Reinstate Anti-Censorship Policies
Five years after removing ALA’s Library Bill of Rights and Freedom to Read statements from Loudoun County (Va.) Library’s operating policies, the board of trustees voted by 5–3 at its January 19 meeting to reinstate them.
The three trustees who opposed the action expressed concern that endorsing the documents would make the library vulnerable to legal action by groups who could demand that the library acquire specific materials, according to Elaine Williamson of Mainstream Loudoun. A grassroots activist group, Mainstream Loudoun won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award from the Playboy Foundation last year for successfully challenging the use of Internet filters on all county library computers. “We’re glad the door to censorship has been closed,” Williamson told American Libraries.
According to an account of the meeting published in Mainstream Loudoun’s electronic newsletter, board member Mary Gail Swenson said she was voting for the reinstatement as a “tribute“ to former trustee Linda Conti-White, who had opposed the excision of the anti-censorship documents during her tenure on the board.
Posted January 31, 2000.
|
