Competency A

A. articulate the ethics, values and foundational principles of library and information professionals and their role in the promotion of intellectual freedom;

It is important that we as librarians support the first amendment right to free speech by making available that speech to information consumers. Free speech is not only words but can encompass documentary photographs and other modes of expression. My portion of the art exhibition in the Scotland/US collaboration was built around the theme of the Japanese American Relocation Executive Order 9066 in WWII . Dorothy Lange's photographs were censored by the military during the war as they were visually critical of the U.S. government's decision during WWII to imprison thousands of people without evidence or a trial but based merely on their ancestry. Even baby orphans were moved from orphanages into the desert prisons.  As, ironically, Dorothy Lange's project was paid by another government department, the photographs fall into the public domain once they were released. The United States National Archives created a project in wich they began scanning photographs and other public domain documents and utting them on the web at http://www.nara.gov.  Making the public aware of the availability of the images helps to mitigate the censorship during the war.
    I also put up a 3-minute documentary I made of the Japanese American internment using photographs and artwork of the era in the exhibition. I made it during shortly after 9-11 when the Japanese American community was concerned that the American government was once again targeting people of a specific ancestry and without evidence imprisoning people for years without a trial. Some people were becoming active and demanding that those people who were imprisoned had a right to a trial and that evidence must be presented that justified the imprisonment. The interesting thing to me is that I felt weird and questioned putting it up since part of the audienc was not American. Like not telling a family's dirty laundry, there was a surprising desire to protect the "American image." I chose to share the film because that funny feeling is the beginning of censorship and as a person in the library community, I stand against censorship.



You can view the movie at
http://www.hungryflower.com/movie/relocation.mov