Michael Gorman Quotations

The American Library Association (ALA) is saddened by the tragic loss of life and widespread damage to homes and communities by Hurricane Katrina, ... Libraries are an indispensable part of their communities, providing support and resources for everyone. Dozens of libraries in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama need our assistance so they, in turn, can meet the many needs of their communities.

These are just the challenges that we've heard of, ... It's estimated that there are probably four to five times as many that we don't hear about.

What displaced people desperately need it is knowledge and information, and that's what public libraries do.

It all stems from a fearfulness of well-meaning people. We believe in parental responsibility, and that you should take care of what your children are reading. But it's not your responsibility to tell a whole class of kids what they should read.

I feel that this is a potential disaster on several levels. They are reducing scholarly texts to paragraphs. The point of a scholarly text is they are written to be read sequentially from beginning to end, making an argument and engaging you in dialogue.

There is a failure in the core values of education. They're told to go to college in order to get a better job -- and that's okay. But the real task is to produce educated people.

If you're a freedom-to-read person, pulling a book like that one is not that different from any book that might have fake scholarship. No matter how wrong a book might be, people should have access to it. It's a slippery slope once you start removing books like that.

It's a perpetual problem, and it attacks fundamental American liberties -- the attempt to impose one's own positions on society as a whole,

We believe in parental responsibility, and that you should take care of what your children are reading. But it's not your responsibility to tell a whole class of kids what they should read.

We are troubled by what seems to be an accelerating trend in increased restrictions on access to government information.