INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM IN MISSOURI: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

Ben RichardsonPaula MartinLisa PritchardPam Klipsch

Controls of Information

The doctrinal focus of this class is access to government records, meetings and processes, and the legal and political theory giving rise to such rights.

Dr. Charles Davis – FOI specialist

Advice on F.O.I.

It's as important as freedom of expression, for without access to government information, we are being ruled, rather than ruling ourselves.

FOI is central to the development of citizen self-governance, which of course is what libraries are the fuel of.

Our rights of access are only as good as we, the people, make them. Without constant vigilance, legislatures are eager to hide information from the public. And librarians are stewards of public information, so…..

The F.O.I Project

The class project was designed to teach journalism skills to use the freedom of information act to find information for stories.

Sunshine requests for public records of book challenges were sent to all 566 Missouri school districts asking for all correspondence regarding book challenges since Jan. 1, 2008

StatsNumber of responses: 495Number of non-responses: 71Average number of contacts before responses were received: TwoNumber of districts with challenges: 32, or 6.5 percent of those that respondedTotal number of challenges: 53District with the most challenges: North Kansas City (7)Number of challenges resulting in book’s removal: 12, or 22.6 percentNumber of challenges resulting in book being kept: 29, or 54.7 percentNumber of challenges resulting in book restrictions: 11, or 18.9 percent

The Challenged Books

Banned in Missouri Videohttp://youtu.be/01R77m1GwzY