Between 1967 and 1974, a number of librarians came together to push for change in the American Library Association. They soon prompted a majority of the profession to examine their role in the dissemination and preservation of culture and to ask basic questions about the terrain that the profession defends. A particular concern was the limitations to intellectual freedom (if any) that might arise in the pursuit of other perhaps equally worthy goals. The questions raised by this advocacy group were based on a relatively new concept of librarianly social responsibility that was partly an...

Contains an interview plus 45 columns dealing with such topics as book-burning, genocide, government secrecy and repression, cataloging, indexing, Banned Books Week, classism, self-censorship, and free speech for library staff.

The topics of these 34 selections range from Herrenvolk terminology, fiction access, and subject headings for consumer health information to South African censorship, Idi Amin's repressions, and the Creationists' hidden agenda. Also includes material on cataloging teenage literature, racism in children's books and an ALA-produced film The Speaker, and reportage on the intellectual freedom scene in Greece, West Germany, and Soviet Union.
Reprinted from sources such as Interracial Books for Children Bulletin, Top of the News, Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, Technicalities.

First published in 1971 (by Scarecrow Press), Prejudices and Antipathies marked the opening salvo in the fight to rid the Library of Congress Subject Headings of bias. In the ensuing 22 years, many of its recommendations have been embraced.

Still, Christocentrism permeates LC, racially-tinged "Oriental" and "primitive" headings abound, reminding the profession of the progress made and problems that persist. The McFarland edition includes a foreword, a new preface and an index.