Associate Professor and BS/IS Program Director Emily Knox was recently appointed president of the Board of Trustees of the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF), a nonprofit legal and educational organization affiliated with the American Library Association, and elected vice president/president-elect of Beta Phi Mu, the international honor society for library and information studies.
Knox has been a member of the FTRF since 2012, member of the board since 2016, and vice president since her appointment to the office last year. She was heavily involved with the Foundation's 50th anniversary celebration, which included a Kickstarter for a commemorative book, Reading Dangerously, and a special gala at the 2019 ALA Annual Meeting. Knox's intellectual freedom and censorship course is taught in conjunction with the FTRF. Her goal is to increase membership during her tenure as president.
Knox was inducted into Beta Phi Mu in 2003 upon receiving her master's in library and information science from the University of Illinois, and she has served as the faculty liaison to the Alpha Chapter (Illinois) since 2014. She was elected a director of the national organization in 2015 and appointed treasurer in 2018. Knox's book, Book Banning in 21st Century America, was the first monograph in the Beta Phi Mu Scholars' Series. She aims to strengthen Beta Phi Mu's financial position.
"I'm excited to see what the next two years will bring for both of these organizations! The Freedom to Read Foundation supports the most important value of librarianship, information access for all, while Beta Phi Mu supports the best in scholarship and service that LIS has to offer," Knox said.
Knox joined the iSchool faculty in 2012. Her research interests include information access, intellectual freedom and censorship, the intersection of print culture and reading practices, and information ethics and policy. In addition to FTRF and Beta Phi Mu, she serves on the boards of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) and National Coalition Against Censorship. Knox received her PhD from the doctoral program at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information.