Freedom to Read Foundation announces 2012 board of trustees election winners

CHICAGO — The Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) has announced the results of its 2012 board of trustees election, held in April.

Five trustees were elected to two-year terms, beginning in June: Carol Brey-Casiano, Julius C. Jefferson, Jr., Mary Minow, Judith Platt and Nancy P. Zimmerman. Brey-Casiano, Minow and Platt were re-elected. Jefferson and Zimmerman were newly elected (Jefferson served previously as an ex-officio member of the board as chair of ALA's Intellectual Freedom Committee).

These trustees will join Helen Adams (Fremont, Wisc.), Jonathan Bloom (New York), Chris Finan (New York), Christine Jenkins (Champaign, Ill.), Herbert Krug (Evanston, Ill.) and Candace Morgan (Portland, Ore.) as elected board members. The 2012-2013 American Library Association president (Maureen Sullivan), president-elect (Barbara Stripling), executive director (Keith Michael Fiels) and Intellectual Freedom Committee chair (Pat Scales) serve on the board as ex-officio trustees. Barbara Jones is the secretary of the board and executive director of the Foundation.

Carol Brey-Casiano (Brasilia, Brazil) is an information resource officer at the U.S. Embassy in Brazil and is a past president of the American Library Association.

Julius C. Jefferson, Jr. (Washington, D.C.) is an information research specialist at the Library of Congress.

Mary Minow (Cupertino, Calif.) is a library law consultant and is Follett Chair at Dominican University's Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

Judith Platt (Washington, D.C.) is the director of free expression advocacy at the Association of American Publishers.

Nancy P. Zimmerman (Columbia, S.C.) is associate dean for academic affairs at The Graduate School, University of South Carolina.

The Freedom to Read Foundation was founded in 1969 to promote and defend the right of individuals to freely express ideas and to access information in libraries and elsewhere. FTRF fulfills its mission through the disbursement of grants to individuals and groups, primarily for the purpose of aiding them in litigation, and through direct participation in litigation dealing with freedom of speech and of the press.