Author Archives

A former school librarian in Wisconsin, Helen Adams is an online senior lecturer for Antioch University-Seattle in the areas of intellectual freedom, privacy, library ethics, and copyright. A member of the AASL Knowledge Quest Advisory Board, the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee, and a KQ blogger, she is the author of Protecting Intellectual Freedom and Privacy in Your School Library (Libraries Unlimited, 2013) and contributor to The Many Faces of School Library Leadership (2nd edition, Libraries Unlimited, 2017). Email: hadams1@centurytel.net.

• Keeping the Flame Alive: 50th Anniversary of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom

  By Helen Adams on 01/03/2017 • ( 0 )

  

  Established in 1967, the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) is fifty years old in 2017. Although you may imagine a large suite of offices with a big staff, that is not the case. OIF is manned by five dedicated individuals… Read More ›

• Give a Gift That Counts!

  By Helen Adams on 12/05/2016 • ( 1 )

  

  Gift giving is part of the tradition of the holiday season, whether you celebrate St. Nicholas Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, Milad un Nabi, or Kwanzaa. If you support the freedom to read and access information in libraries in all formats, consider… Read More ›

• Limitless Libraries: A Collaborative Partnership that Supports At-Risk Students

  By Helen Adams on 10/31/2016 • ( 0 )

  

  What is Limitless Libraries? At an AASL ESSA information session during the 2016 ALA Annual Conference in Orlando, Kent Oliver, director of the Nashville Public Library, spoke to attendees about an extraordinary partnership between the Nashville Public Library and Metro Nashville… Read More ›

• An Extraordinary Experience at the Library of Congress

  By Helen Adams on 10/04/2016 • ( 0 )

  

  Meet Tom Bober, an elementary librarian at R.M. Captain Elementary School in Clayton, Missouri, a small city bordering St. Louis. Tom returned to his school library this fall after serving as one of the two Teachers-in-Residence at the Library of… Read More ›

• Step 1: Celebrate Banned Books Week

  By Helen Adams on 08/30/2016 • ( 2 )

  

  Each September, librarians, teachers, and students celebrate their right to read and fight censorship by observing Banned Books Week (BBW). For 2016, BBW will occur from September 25 to October 1. Using the tagline, “Stand up for your right to… Read More ›

• Helping English Language Learners Succeed

  By Helen Adams on 08/01/2016 • ( 2 )

  

  Many schools in the U.S. today are a mini-United Nations of ethnicities and languages. According to statistics from the Migration Policy Institute, in 2013-2014 K-12 English language learners (ELLs) made up approximately 10 percent of public school students, or about… Read More ›

• ALA in Orlando: Conference Kaleidoscope

  By Helen Adams on 07/06/2016 • ( 1 )

  

  Because of the mass shooting at the Pulse night club in Orlando, my memories of ALA’s Annual Conference in Orlando will always be rainbow hued. Attendees wore rainbow ribbons and black arm bands provided by the Task Force on Equity,… Read More ›

• School Library Research: AASL’s Hidden Gem

  By Helen Adams on 06/03/2016 • ( 1 )

  

    Recently I became re-acquainted with School Library Research  (SLR), AASL’s open-access research journal available on the AASL website. I was looking for research about self-censorship and found that SLR contained many other articles within the broader realm of intellectual… Read More ›

• Choose Privacy Week, May 1-7, Spotlights Minors’ Privacy

  By Helen Adams on 05/02/2016 • ( 1 )

  

  In 2009 the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom created Choose Privacy Week (CPW) as an annual observance to raise awareness of and provide education about the threats to individuals’ privacy. Traditionally observed the first week in May, for the first… Read More ›

• School Library Month and Intellectual Freedom

  By Helen Adams on 04/04/2016 • ( 0 )

  

  April is School Library Month and this year’s theme is “School Libraries Transform Learning.” The combination of a librarian, students, services, and resources magically (and through a lot of hard work) influence and inspire learning, not for one month, but… Read More ›