New Best Practices for Book Challenges and Intellectual Freedom
Description
The library world has dealt with several years of increased book challenges, heightened passions in their communities, and intense scrutiny. What have we learned? What might we do differently going forward? Join two intellectual freedom scholars. Dr. Emily J. M. Knox and Dr. Shannon M. Oltmann, to learn about emerging best practices. We will discuss how to better prepare for challenges, how to improve policies and responses and how to ensure the library can keep serving the community.
This free webinar is part of the ALA eLearning Intellectual Freedom series hosted by the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. Visit ala.org/oif to learn more.
About the Presenters:
Emily Knox is interim dean and professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include information access and intellectual freedom and censorship. She is a member of the Mapping Information Access research team.
The second edition of her book, Book Banning in 21st Century America (Bloomsbury), was published in January 2026. Her most previous book, Foundations of Intellectual Freedom (ALA Neal-Schuman) won the Eli M. Oboler Prize for best published work in the area of intellectual freedom. She has been interviewed by media outlets such as NPR and the New York Times and also testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on book banning.
Emily previously served on the boards of the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Freedom to Read Foundation, and is a former editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy. She received her PhD from the doctoral program at the Rutgers University School of Communication & Information.
Shannon M. Oltmann is the Associate Dean and Director of the School of Information Sciences at Wayne State University, where she is also a full Professor. Previously, Oltmann was an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator in the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky. Oltmann’s research interests include intellectual freedom, censorship, information precarity, and qualitative research methods. She wrote the book Practicing Intellectual Freedom in Libraries and edited The Fight Against Book Bans: Perspectives from the Field; her work has been funded by the American Library Association and the Institute of Museum & Library Services and has been widely published. She studies the implementation of and resistance to censorship in libraries and other spaces. Another stream of work investigates information precarity, a lack of information and resources brought about by systemic marginalization. Oltmann has spoken to a wide variety of groups, organizations, and media outlets about intellectual freedom. She is on the Board of Directors for the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) and is an Associate Editor for Library Quarterly. She obtained her Ph.D. from Indiana University.
This event will be hosted in Zoom. Automatic captions will be enabled for this event. This event will be recorded, and registrants will receive access to the recording within a day after the event ends.
If you have questions or requests regarding accessibility, contact us at ce@ala.org or at 312-280-5100.