With a book under contract, a nationwide research project underway, a recent publication in The Library Quarterly, and plans to teach a unique new course to students across the country this fall, Assistant Professor Emily Knox (MS ’03) is gaining national attention for her research in the area of intellectual freedom.
First inspired to study banned books by her mother, a former high school librarian, Knox’s research today centers around the relationships between information, society, and power, and the impact of these relationships on intellectual freedom. She’s found her niche looking specifically at what factors motivate individuals to initiate book challenges.
“I look at the themes in challengers’ discourse and try to understand the commonalities,” Knox explained. “How do they justify this thing that seems so strange to many of us and goes against a lot of ideas about ‘freedom’ in the United States?”
Though there has been much documentation and publicity surrounding attempts to restrict access to print and electronic information, most focuses on the responses of librarians and communities rather than the factors that motivate some individuals to request that access to particular information be restricted. Knox is under contract with Rowman and Littlefield to publish a book in 2015 in which she’ll examine the worldviews that motivate challengers as well as their own reading habits.
To explore this issue quantitatively, Knox and colleagues from the University of Kentucky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and MuckRock, an outlet for government document-based news and public records request clearinghouse, created the Mapping Information Access project. This initiative seeks to compile data on book challenges and internet filtering from the public records of every public library and school in the nation. Although starting with a sample of institutions across the country, the team hopes to eventually create a comprehensive record of challenges and shed light on the conditions in which information access has been challenged or restricted. They are collecting geographic, demographic, and economic data, as well as collection development policies and internet filtering protocols.
“Almost all of the books that you read on intellectual freedom say that books can be banned anywhere, but there’s no citation for that. We have really incomplete information. This research will give us a bird’s eye view of how challenging operates over the entire country,” Knox explained. “I’m interested in seeing if there are general trends with book banning. I’m particularly interested in correlations between challenges and economic downturns or insider/outsider effects.”
Knox has also investigated the historical evolution of book banning and the implications of this in modern librarianship. In January, she published an article titled, “Supporting Intellectual Freedom: Symbolic Capital and Practical Philosophy in Librarianship,” in The Library Quarterly, 84(1). In this paper, Knox discussed how three areas—codification, institutionalization, and investigation—formed the foundation of a practical philosophy for the support of intellectual freedom in librarianship.
Knox’s research into the history of intellectual freedom and contemporary censorship activities are coming together in a new course she will teach this fall. Offered jointly by GSLIS and the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF), the graduate-level course will be taught online and will be open to any student enrolled in a library and information science program.
“We will explore a range of topics in the class from the historical roots of intellectual freedom to pro- and anti-censorship arguments, as well as learn practical strategies for supporting intellectual freedom in libraries and other institutional settings,” Knox said.
“We’re thrilled to enter into this partnership with the University of Illinois,” said FTRF Executive Director Barbara M. Jones. “We’re particularly looking forward to working with Emily Knox, who has quickly established herself as a leading expert in the field.”