Freedom to Read Foundation announces 2009 Board of Trustees election winners
Contact: Deborah Caldwell-Stone
Acting Executive Director, Freedom to Read Foundation
312-280-4224
For Immediate Release
May 19, 2009
CHICAGO - Six trustees were elected to two-year terms in the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) 2009 Board of Trustees election, held in April. The terms for the following trustees begin in June: Bernadine Abbott Hoduski, Jonathan Bloom, Robert P. Doyle, Susan Hildreth, Christine Jenkins and Candace Morgan. Abbott Hoduski and Doyle were elected to their second consecutive terms; Bloom and Morgan were re-elected after a mandatory period off the board; and Hildreth and Jenkins are newly elected. Also joining the 2009-2010 board will be incoming ALA President Elect Roberta Stevens and incoming ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee Chair Martin Garnar, both of whom will serve on the board in ex-officio capacities.
These trustees will join Carrie Gardner, Barbara Jones, Burton Joseph, Pamela Klipsch, and Kent Oliver, who are elected board members, and incoming ALA President Camila Alire and Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels, who are ex-officio board members. Deborah Caldwell-Stone is the acting secretary of the board and acting executive director of the Foundation.Â
Biographical information on the election winners follows:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
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, 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.
Jonathan Bloom (New York) specializes in media and First Amendment, intellectual property and art law with Weil, Gotshal & Manges. As counsel to the Freedom to Read Committee of the Association of American Publishers, he has authored several briefs in First Amendment cases that the Freedom to Read Foundation also has joined.
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 of the United States State Department and ALA. He has served as an ALA councilor and currently serves as co-chair of the FTRF 40th Anniversary Gala.
Susan Hildreth (Seattle, Wash.) is the city librarian at the Seattle Public Library. She came to Seattle earlier this year from California, where she was the state librarian and prior to that the San Francisco city librarian. She recently served as president of the Public Library Association.
Christine Jenkins (Champaign, Ill.) is associate professor at the University of Illinois at the Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library & Information Science and also serves as director of the school’s Center for Children’s Books. She is actively involved in ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Round Table, having served as a director and current chair of the Oboler Award Committee and  has been a trustee of the LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund. As a Ph.D. student, she worked for two years as Intellectual Freedom Information Coordinator for the State of Wisconsin.
Candace Morgan (Portland, Ore.) is a past president of the Freedom to Read Foundation. Since retiring as associate director of the Fort Vancouver (Wash.) Regional Library, she has worked as a trainer, consultant, writer and adjunct faculty member for the Emporia State University School of Library and Information Management and the Portland State University Hatfield School of Government. She is a past chair of the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee and chairs the steering committee of ALA’s Lawyers for Libraries program.
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.
