[OPLINLIST] FW: [FTRF-L:2359] Free-Speech Champion Gordon Conable Dies

[Kent Oliver]

FYI. Gordon was a great champion of Intellectual Freedom and will be
greatly missed.  Kent

Kent Oliver, Library Director
Stark County District Library
715 Market Ave., N., Canton, OH 44702
W: 330 458 2710 FAX: 330 455 9596
KOliver@starklibrary.org
"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby
can't chew it."  Mark Twain


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ftrf-l@ala.org [mailto:owner-ftrf-l@ala.org] On Behalf Of
Jonathan Kelley
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 8:40 AM
To: Freedom to Read Foundation Board of Trustees
Subject: [FTRF-L:2359] Free-Speech Champion Gordon Conable Dies


>From American Libraries Online:

http://tinyurl.com/4uro4

Free-Speech Champion Gordon Conable Dies

Gordon Conable, president of the American Library Association's Freedom
to Read Foundation since 1998, ALA Council member, and vice president of
West Coast operations for Library Systems and Services (LSSI), died
suddenly January 12 of a heart attack at his home in Riverside,
California. He was 58.=20

"Gordon was an unsurpassed champion of intellectual freedom, a wise and
generous mentor to many, and a consummate librarian who was a true
leader of our profession," John W. Berry, who succeeded Conable as FTRF
president at ALA's 2005 Midwinter Meeting. Characterizing Conable as "a
giant of this profession," FTRF Executive Director Judith Krug told
American Libraries that she viewed him as a "creative and brilliant
librarian" whose ideas were "so important to where librarianship is
going."

Earning his MLS from the Columbia University library school in 1976,
Conable began his library career that same year at the Fort Vancouver
Regional Library and rose to become associate director of the library
system in 1978. He served as director of the Monroe County (Ohio)
Library System from 1988 to 1998; during his tenure there, he withstood
controversy over the library's adding Madonna's Sex to the collection.
"It got very ugly and hostile, and there were bomb threats phoned in,"
Robert Lepsig, who was a board member at the time, said of the episode
in the January 18 Toledo Blade. The episode earned Conable the 2000 John
Phillip Immroth Award.

Conable's wife, Irene Conable, who is a school library media specialist,
told the Blade that he considered librarianship "a place in the world
where he could have a professional life that supported his philosophical
beliefs." FTRF has established a fund in his honor.

Posted January 18, 2005.