Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues.
All people, regardless of origin, age, background, or views, possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use.
Latham has noted that the Chicago Public Library adopted an intellectual freedom policy in April 1936 in response to challenges from Polish and Russian communities about the Foreign Language Department collection policies suggesting that the value of intellectual freedom was on the table in librarianship discussion before 1938.
[5] The original adoption of the Library Bill of Rights was introduced with the statement, "Today indications in many parts of the world point to growing intolerance, suppression of free speech, and censorship affecting the rights of minorities and individuals," a reference to the emergence of totalitarian states during that time.
[1] During the Cold War period, the Library Bill of Rights supported opponents of censorship of materials interpreted as communist propaganda.
In 1996, the American Library Association reaffirmed the inclusion of age as an attribute that should not be the basis for denying access to information.
This occurred after the American Library Trustee Association (ALTA) brought a request for this to the ALA Council.
Something similar to the Library Bill of Rights could be retained as an accompanying "aspirational creed", such as a revised form of the ALA Code of Ethics, but it would need to provide more practical guidance.
This view, Wiegand argues, is evidenced by specific historical contradictions within the profession since the adoption of the Library Bill of Rights such as the controversy around the legacy of Melvil Dewey and the renaming of the ALA Medal of Excellence, the lack of ALA support for civil rights protestors following the Alexandria Library sit-in despite the then-recent adoption of the Library Bill of Rights by the ALA, lack of support from the ALA for librarians working against the ban of materials targeted by the California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s, and others, before concluding that the profession and its organizing bodies must have a reconciliation with this history before more meaningful frameworks for library rights and their protection can be produced.