Intellectual Freedom Award

A press release found at Access OLA (Ontario Library Association) announces that Bernard Katz has received the Les Fowlie Intellectual Freedom Award for 2008. Katz served as the senior director at the University of Guelph McLaughlin Library. He contributed greatly to the OLA's work on intellectual freedom and copyright. According to the release,

This award honours Bernard's ethics, integrity and passion in the defense of intellectual freedom in all its forms over the last two decades as a member of OLA. He led the development of the OLA's Statement on the Intellectual Rights of the Individual, a document that has remained relevant and has withstood the tests of time. Last year, his work with OLA in the defense of the right of children in the Silver Birch Award program to read Three Wishes by Deborah Ellis was breathtaking.

Past recipients include the Toronto Public Library and Halton Board of Education.

Read the OLA's Statement on the Intellectual Rights of the Individual in PDF format.