Librarianship and Human Rights: A Twenty-First Century Guide

In this book, the reader will encounter a myriad of urgent library and information voices reflecting contemporary local, national, and transnational calls to action on conflicts generated by failures to acknowledge human rights, by struggles for recognition and representation, by social exclusion, and the library institution's role therein. These voices infuse library and information work worldwide into social movements and the global discourse of human rights, they depict library and information workers as political actors, they offer some new possibilities for strategies of resistance, and they challenge networks of control. This book's approach to library and information work is grounded in practical, critical, and emancipatory terms; social action is a central pattern. This book is conceived as a direct challenge to the notion of library neutrality, especially in the present context of war, revolution, and social change. This book, for example, locates library and information workers as participants and interventionists in social conflicts. The strategies for social action worldwide documented in this book were selected because of their connection to elements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that relate particularly to core library values, information ethics, and global information justice. These include, but are no limited to: Respect for the dignity of human beings (Art. 1); Confidentiality (Art. 1, 2, 3, 6); Equality of opportunity (Art. 2, 7); Privacy (Art. 3, 12); Right to be protected from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Art. 5); Right to own property (Art. 17); Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Art. 18); Right to freedom of opinion and expression (Art. 19); Right to peaceful assembly and association (Art. 20); Right to economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for dignity and the free development of personality (Art. 22); Right to education (Art. 26); Right to participate in the cultural life of the community (Art. 27); Right to the protection of the moral and material interests concerning any scientific, literary or artistic production (Art. 27). This book also encourages readers to pay attention to links between library and information work and the following solidarity rights not currently incorporated into any legally-binding human rights framework: the right to communicate; the right to natural resources; the right to participation in mankind's heritage.Samek, Toni is the author of 'Librarianship and Human Rights: A Twenty-First Century Guide', published 2007 under ISBN 9781843341987 and ISBN 1843341980.