RIP Judith Krug

I had no idea who Judith Krug was until the mid-1990s, when I started working at the MIT Press Bookstore. Each year during the last week of September, the bookstore's manager insisted on putting up a display each year to mark Banned Books Week, which "celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox," according to the American Library Association. Every year I would marvel, if that's the word, at the list of books that had frequently been either challenged or outright banned in libraries across the country. Perennial entries on the most often challenged list include books by Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Maya Angelou, and Judy Blume. The Harry Potter books have been frequent targets in recent times.

Banned Books Week was the brainchild of librarian Judith Krug, who was the director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom since its founding in 1967. A staunch defender of the First Amendment, she created BBW in 1982 to draw attention to what she saw as continual and serious threats to free expression nationwide - in a word, censorship. As she said in a 2002 speech:

We [bring people and information together] by making sure libraries have information and ideas across the spectrum of social and political thought, so people can choose what they want to read or view or listen to. Some users find materials in their local library collection to be untrue, offensive, harmful or even dangerous. But libraries serve the information needs of all of the people in the community — not just the loudest, not just the most powerful, not even just the majority. Libraries serve everyone.

Krug died on Saturday at the age of 69 - somewhat ironically, just before the beginning of this year's National Library Week. A New York Times editorial is here, and an appreciation by NYT editorial board member Dorothy Samuels is here. Banned Books Week lives on - it will be observed this year between September 26 and October 3 - but there can be no doubt that cause of free expression, an idea close to the heart of everyone involved in publishing and reading, has lost one of its most determined and principled advocates. She'll be missed.