Small Task : Intellectual Freedom - Readings 3.9 and 3.10

Intellectual freedom is defined as every person’s right to embrace any belief or opinion on any subject and the right of a person to convey that idea or belief in anyway they consider fitting. I believe in it because in New Zealand, it is important that the voices of citizens are not suppressed on the grounds of political, social, moral or other views for effective participation in democracy.

Restricted materials in my workplace are mainly in the library collection. They are the items that have been classified by the censorship office as R18, R16 etc, DVDs and music CDS mainly but include one or two book titles and also some graphic novels. I have no choice in agreeing to these restrictions as they are law, but in principle agree to the restriction of items with content that is unsuitable for young people.

As we are a library providing City Council services, some information regarding meetings and ratepayers details are not for public consumption in accordance with the Privacy Act. Another aspect of confidentiality also include staff and payroll records.

The electronic environment contributes to the complexity of the censorship issue in the fact that the Internet is uncensored. This means libraries have to decide what materials are to be made available - will there be filtering or not? According to LIANZA’s Statement of Intellectual Freedom (March 21, 2002), librarians should resist all attempts of censorship, except where that censorship is required by law. Putting restrictions on can block potentially useful information as well as the undesirable. An example is when an artist’s website or medical site depicts a nude human body. Should this be filtered?

Of course the issue of privacy is of utmost importance for me as an individual. I will only be comfortable if I can control what information about myself be made public. This is also when social networking sites and blogs can be a dangerous threat if we do not filter or set privacy settings on who can access and the ability to block certain information out.

As a librarian, it is in our code of professional conduct that any information about identified clients and their individual interest obtained during the course of my duty should be kept privileged and not used for any other purpose without the permission of the clients or required by law (LIANZA Code of Professional Conduct).

I believe that freedom of information and access overrides censorship or privacy issues because it is everyone’s right to be provided with the widest range of information materials available. This will include viewpoints on topics held in the community. Although an individual’s privacy should duly be respected, information resources on the other hand should not be censored or omitted or have access denied due to partisan or doctrinal principles. This includes electronic or digital information resources.