This item is in: Chandos > Library management > Ethical and funding issues for librarians

Librarianship and Human Rights: A twenty-first century guide

Toni Samek, University of Alberta, Canada

Chandos Information Professional Series

…a necessary, important and long-overdue book.
SHINE Journal

This is by far the best book I have read on librarianship for a very long time.
John Pateman, Head of Libraries, Learning and Inclusion, Lincolnshire County Council

Inspiring, affirming, activating, energizing, I ran out of superlatives to describe this book. If you are a library worker who wants to change the world, read it today – because tomorrow may already be too late.
John Pateman, Head of Libraries, Learning and Inclusion, Lincolnshire County Council

 - the first monograph of its kind
 - locates librarianship front and centre in knowledge societies
 - mainstreams critical librarianship
 - portrays library and information workers as participants and interventionists in social conflicts
 - has urgent purpose and is committed to an optimistic vision

In this book, the reader will encounter a myriad of urgent library and information voices reflecting contemporary local, national, and transnational calls to action on conflicts generated by failures to acknowledge human rights, by struggles for recognition and representation, by social exclusion, and the library institution’s role therein. These voices infuse library and information work worldwide into social movements and the global discourse of human rights, they depict library and information workers as political actors, they offer some new possibilities for strategies of resistance, and they challenge networks of control. This book’s approach to library and information work is grounded in practical, critical, and emancipatory terms; social action is a central pattern. This book is conceived as a direct challenge to the notion of library neutrality, especially in the present context of war, revolution, and social change. This book, for example, locates library and information workers as participants and interventionists in social conflicts. The strategies for social action worldwide documented in this book were selected because of their connection to elements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that relate particularly to core library values, information ethics, and global information justice. These include, but are no limited to: Respect for the dignity of human beings (Art. 1); Confidentiality (Art. 1, 2, 3, 6); Equality of opportunity (Art. 2, 7); Privacy (Art. 3, 12); Right to be protected from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Art. 5); Right to own property (Art. 17); Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Art. 18); Right to freedom of opinion and expression (Art. 19); Right to peaceful assembly and association (Art. 20); Right to economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for dignity and the free development of personality (Art. 22); Right to education (Art. 26); Right to participate in the cultural life of the community (Art. 27); Right to the protection of the moral and material interests concerning any scientific, literary or artistic production (Art. 27). This book also encourages readers to pay attention to links between library and information work and the following solidarity rights not currently incorporated into any legally-binding human rights framework: the right to communicate; the right to natural resources; the right to participation in mankind's heritage.

ISBN 1 84334 146 8
ISBN-13: 978 1 84334 146 8
January 2007
232 pages  234 x 156mm  paperback  
£42.50 / US$70.00 / €50.00

Usually dispatched within 24 hours

£62.50 / US$105.00 / €75.00

An e-book version of this title is available to purchase as part of a Collection or Pick n Mix. Visit Chandos Publishing Online

About the author

Dr Toni Samek is Associate Professor at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). Toni chairs the Canadian Library Association's Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom and is an Advisory Board member of the international group Information for Social Change. Toni’s teaching, research, and service interests include critical librarianship, intercultural information ethics, global information justice, human rights, intellectual freedom, and academic freedom.

Titles which may also be of interest:
Libraries and Society
Freedom of Information and the Developing World
The Politics of Libraries and Librarianship
Global Information Inequalities
Globalisation, Information and Libraries

Contents

PART 1 THE RHETORIC
PART 2 THE REALITY

PART 1 THE RHETORIC

An urgent context for twenty-first century librarianship

Human rights, contestations and moral responsibilities of library and information workers

PART 2 THE REALITY

Practical strategies for social action

Prevalent manifestations of social action applied to library and information work

Specific forms of social action used in library and information work for social change