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Joe Kohlburn, MA-ISLT, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville assistant professor and OER and Scholarly Communications Librarian, has been awarded along with his fellow members of the Missouri Library Association Intellectual Freedom Committee (MLA-IFC) the 2023 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award.

According to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences, “The Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award is presented annually to individuals or groups who have furthered the cause of intellectual freedom, particularly as it affects libraries and information centers and the dissemination of ideas.”

The award was established in 1969 by the UIUC iSchool to honor Robert B. Downs on his twenty-fifth anniversary as the school's director. At the height of the McCarthy era, Downs advocated for intellectual freedom and the First Amendment. According to UIUC, Downs’ activism inspired President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Don’t Join the Bookburners” speech.

Kohlburn said the MLA-IFC hosts workshops in Missouri to better center intellectual freedom within libraries and how to engage with those challenging books. He chaired the committee during the pandemic, a time when the committee began writing letters to address efforts by various organizations to challenge or ban books.

"Usually, these are parent groups who don't want their kids to read about gay people being real or structural racism,” Kohlburn said. “We write to the school boards and ask them to reconsider [banning the books]. We did a lot of interviews, and since it has blown up, I would say this award is the biggest intellectual freedom [award] you can receive.”

Kohlburn began his librarian career at UMSL as a student library worker but has since worked in many academic and public libraries. He has been with SIUE for more than a year, working on open educational resources for students and professors. Kohlburn said he is collaborating with Lovejoy Library's digital archivist Marcella Lees, to improve SPARK and the digital archive.

“I’ve been doing a lot with OER programs,” Kohlburn said. “It is a digital textbook that can replace a print book or can replace a for-profit textbook. These are available for free, so they keep the textbook rental fee cost down, and make things more available for students."

Kohlburn said he is working with multiple SIUE professors to create new lab manuals and textbooks for their classes. He said he is also working with The Alestle to digitize previous issues of the publication. Last year, Kohlburn worked with the newly appointed Lovejoy Library Dean Marlee Graser and former Dean Eric Ruckh to write the library’s intellectual freedom policy.

“My favorite part of my work is talking to young people about intellectual freedom,” Kohlburn said. “I think most young people are like, 'I don't want some random person I have never met in Springfield or Washington D.C. to tell me what to read.' It is rewarding to help people become activists in their own right—it is the best part of the work."

PHOTO:  Lovejoy Library's Joe Kohlburn, MA-ISLT, recipient of the 2023 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award