Freedom to Read Foundation announces 2007 Board of Trustees election winners

Contact: Judith Krug


Director, Office for Intellectual Freedom


312-280-4222


ftrf@ala.org

For Immediate Release


May 15, 2007

Freedom to Read Foundation announces 2007 Board of Trustees election winners

(CHICAGO) The Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) is pleased to announce the winners of its 2007 Board of Trustees election.

The following elected trustees will serve a two-year term beginning during the 2007 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., and will continue to serve through the 2009 ALA Annual Conference held in Chicago:

  • Bernadine Abbott Hoduski (Helena, Mont.) retired in 1997 after serving as professional librarian/staff member for the Joint Committee on Printing for nearly 25 years. Prior to joining the Joint Committee on Printing, she served as Head Librarian, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Kansas City, Mo., and as guest lecturer at Central Missouri State University and the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Library Schools. She was the founder of ALA’s Government Documents Round Table in 1972 and currently serves on the ALA Council.



  • Therese Bigelow (Kansas City, Mo.) is associate director of Strategic Planning & Community Development at the Kansas City (Mo.) Public Library. She currently serves on the Marketing Public Libraries Committee of the Public Library Association and is an ALA Councilor.



  • Robert P. Doyle (Chicago) is executive director of the Illinois Library Association. From 1986–1996, Doyle was the director of ALA International Relations Office and the first director of the Library Fellows program, a joint program United States State Department and ALA. He has served as an ALA Councilor.



  • John K. Horany (Dallas) is an attorney in private practice. Horany was the ACLU’s cooperating attorney in the case Sund v. City of Wichita Falls, in which he won a ruling protecting public libraries from censorship. He serves on the faculty of ALA’s Lawyers for Libraries project.



  • James G. Neal (New York) is the vice president for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University,N.Y. He has served on the board of the Association of Research Libraries and the Executive Board of ALA.



  • Judith Platt (Washington, D.C.) is director, Freedom to Read & Communications and Public Affairs, at the Association of American Publishers (AAP). As such, she is responsible for articulating AAP’s position on important free speech issues as laid down in the Freedom to Read Statement more than 50 years ago.

Elected trustees will join Francis J. Buckley (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Chris Finan (New York), Deborah Jacobs (Seattle, Wash.), Burton Joseph (Chicago), and Candace D. Morgan (Portland, Ore.) as elected board members. The ALA’s new President Loriene Roy, ALA President-Elect James Rettig, ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels, and Intellectual Freedom Committee Chair Kenton Oliver will serve on the board in an ex-officio capacity, with vote. Judith Krug is the secretary of the board and executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation.

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.