Censorship Is a Drag

Libraries, long tasked with defending intellectual freedom, find themselves under siege with threats of censorship for carrying gender/sexuality-related materials or holding LGBTQ-related events. Efforts to censor materials and control programming arguably threaten to have a chilling effect on libraries’ ability to carry out their core missions. We are soliciting contributions from across the library ecosystem exploring the significance of these threats and how librarians have responded, offering an intellectual and practical toolkit, in tandem with lessons with experience, to help libraries make their way through this new intellectual climate.

Jordan Ruud is the collection development librarian at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith, where he serves as liaison to the humanities disciplines. His research interests include user experience and intellectual freedom; he recently served as a panelist on “Intellectual Freedom: Arkansas Perspectives” at the Arkansas Library Association’s annual conference. He received his MSLIS degree in 2012 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In his spare time, he’s a movie buff (keep an ear out for the Midnight Symposium, a forthcoming podcast about horror movies that he’s been recording with colleagues) and is currently involved with organizing River Valley Pride out of Fort Smith, AR.

Jason Phillips joined the UCF Libraries in January 2022 as Social Sciences Librarian in the Research and Information Services Department.  He is the subject librarian for Criminal Justice and Sociology and provides research assistance, library instruction and collection development in these subject areas.  His research areas of interest are diversity, equity, and inclusion in library services and collections. Jason previously worked at The University of Alabama as a Serials Copy Cataloger, Mississippi State University as a Government and United Nations Documents Librarian, Georgetown University as the Government Information Librarian, and the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith as a Public Services Librarian.  He comes to UCF with extensive experience with library instruction, conducting in-person and virtual reference interviews, creating educational displays and online learning resources, initiating and coordinating outreach activities, and collection development and management.  He has served in state and national organizations, including a two-year term on ALA’s Stonewall Book Award Committee, published three peer-reviewed articles and one book chapter, and in 2021 gave a presentation at an international conference with a conference paper on how college campuses can be more inclusive to transgender people.