#LISprochat lead-in - topic & questions for Mon Oct 16 2017 - 8:30pm ET

via IDEO

TOPIC

Neutrality and the Library Industry

In the wake of everything that's happening in the US under the 45th President neutrality is a hot topic right now. I feel like this is especially true in the Library industry. David Lee King does a really good job of discussing the issue in his article Ugly Beliefs, Free Speech, and Libraries. I think the best part of the article is the quote from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

“Protecting free speech is not something we do because we agree with all of the speech that gets protected. We do it because we believe that no one—not the government and not private commercial enterprises—should decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t.”

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT WE'RE CHANGING THE TIME TO 8:30PM ET!

QUESTIONS

We post the questions here in advance of the chat so you can decide whether or not this topic is of interest to you and/or prepare your answers in advance.

Q1 Do you agree that libraries should be completely neutral as per the library bill of rights? How are we doing with that?

Q2 Do you ever have trouble keeping your personal biases out of your professional decisions? How do you handle that?

Q3 How do you handle promoting and supporting materials/questions that make you feel morally uneasy?

Q4 What ideas/thoughts do you have about how we as a whole can do better at keeping our libraries neutral?

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