By Dan Chase

Freedom of speech is a fundamental right granted to every American by the First Amendment, but can the same be said for the freedom to read?

That's what a number of panelists will try to answer this week during the Freedom of Speech Forum, a discussion on censorship in libraries that will be held Thursday on the campus of Utah State University as part of National Library Week 2000.

The forum, whose panelists include former Logan LDS Institute Director, Kenneth Godfrey, USU Department of Journalism and Communication professor, Mike Sweeney, and director of University of Utah's law library, Rita Reusch, will be held in the Taggart Student Center's Sunburst Lounge from 2 to 5 p.m. KUTV-TV's Rod Decker will act as moderator.

Though the forum will offer insight on censorship issues facing today's libraries, local librarians say censorship is not something they deal with frequently.

"We have had people that have requested that we remove items (from shelves)," said Ronald Jenkins, director of the Logan Library. "Sometimes they only request to have it moved from one collection in the library to another collection. . . So we do get requests like that but not very often."

In fact, Robert Murdoch, deputy director of USU libraries, said that libraries are encouraged to follow the American Library Association's code of ethics and provide freedom to the library user.

Murdoch said the code of ethics encourages libraries to "protect each user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received in resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted" and to "uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources."

"Part of our responsibility is to acquire and collect and provide information that is unbiased," Murdoch said. "I think that that's especially appropriate and necessary in an academic community, who is our primary clientele."

And while Murdoch said that libraries try to shun any kind of censorship, Richard Schockmel, head of acquisitions for USU libraries, said it's not uncommon for libraries to restrict the use of some materials.

"That's often what we have to do when a book becomes controversial," said Schockmel.

Added Murdoch: "For example, some material may be in special collections where it is protected or isn't available to just pull off the shelf by any person. In the art book room, certainly there are some art books that ... might be exposed to some mischief by people if they were just left in general stacks."

In addition, Jenkins said material--controversial or not--belongs on library shelves because it represents the community's diverse views.

"We want to provide a variety of information, sources and opinions," Jenkins said. "If we only represented one view in the community, what would happen? Public libraries try to make (material) available to every citizen so they have the opportunity to see, learn, read and decide for themselves."

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