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I am the Director of the Pflugerville Public Library in Pflugerville, Texas (just outside of Austin).

I grew up in Austin and received a Ba from St. Edward's University and an MSIS from the University of Texas. I've spent more than 20 years in libraries including a newspaper library, an academic library, and a public library.

I was the 2018 Texas Librarian of the Year and am a current member of the Texas Library Association Queers and Allies Roundtable; the ¾«¶«´«Ã½Social Responsibilities Roundtable, the Freedom to Read Foundation Board of Trustees, the ¾«¶«´«Ã½Intellectual Freedom Roundtable, Texans for the Right to Read, and the staff liaison for the Pflugerville Equity Commission.

I'm a passionate supporter of animal rights and social justice. When not at the library, my husband and I spend our time hiking, enjoying the local art scene, and caring for our five pets.

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Wanda is a Public Services Library for Salt Lake County Library Services in Utah. She sits at the desk, and stands on a soapbox, but is trying to listen more to others. Her hobbies are her grandchildren, 4 episode crime series and guessing the days until the A/C is off and the furnace goes on.

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Amanda Sand (Vazquez) is Director at the Dubuque County Library District, a 2019 graduate of the San José State University iSchool, and has over a decade of experience working in public libraries in programming, technical services, and library administration. In her past position as Director of the Orange City Public Library, she gained first-hand experience with intellectual freedom issues through challenges to LGBTQ+ content in the library’s collection. These challenges propelled her to become involved with the Iowa Library Association and ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Round Table. Amanda is a past Freedom to Read Foundation Gordon M. Conable Scholar, chair of the Iowa Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee and the Chapter Councilor for Iowa.

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Johannah (J.R.) Genett is the deputy director of support services at Hennepin County Library, Minnesota, overseeing IT, collection, and learning & development. She is also involved with the Intellectual Freedom Committee.

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Jim Neal is University Librarian Emeritus at Columbia University. He served as the Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University during 2001-2014, providing leadership for university academic computing and a system of twenty-two libraries. His responsibilities included the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, the Copyright Advisory Office, and the Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research. Previously, he served as the Dean of University Libraries at Indiana University and Johns Hopkins University, and held administrative positions in the libraries at Penn State, Notre Dame, and the City University of New York.

Neal was 2017-18 President of the ¾«¶«´«Ã½. He has served on the Council and Executive Board, and was ¾«¶«´«Ã½Treasurer during 2010-13. He was a member of the OCLC Board of Trustees 2010-2021. He has served on the Board and as President of the Association of Research Libraries, on the Board and as Chair of the Research Libraries Group (RLG), on the Board and as Chair of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), and on the Board of the Digital Preservation Network. He is on the Board and is the Treasurer of the Freedom to Read Foundation, and is on the Board and has served as Treasurer of the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO). He has also participated on numerous international, national, and state professional committees, and has been an active member of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). He is a member of the Library Advisory Board of the University of the People. Within ALA, he is currently serving on the ¾«¶«´«Ã½Council and as chair of its Committee on Organization. He was a member of the Steering Committee on Organizational Effectiveness (SCOE), and served on the ¾«¶«´«Ã½Executive Director Search Committee. He serves on the IMLS Reopening Archives, Libraries, and Museums Executive Project Steering Committee (REALM). He served on the ¾«¶«´«Ã½Forward Together Resolutions Task Force and is a member of the ¾«¶«´«Ã½Business Advisory Group. He is the current chair of the International Relations Round Table. He is a member of the ¾«¶«´«Ã½Endowment Trustees.

Neal is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences, consultant and published author, with focuses in the areas of scholarly communication, intellectual property, digital library programs, and library cooperation. He has served on the Scholarly Communication committees of ARL and ACRL and as Chair of the Steering Committee of SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. He has served on the university press boards at Columbia, Johns Hopkins and Indiana. He has represented the American library community in testimony on copyright matters before Congressional committees, was an advisor to the U.S. delegation at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) diplomatic conference on copyright, has worked on copyright policy and advisory groups for universities and for professional and higher education associations, and during 2005-08 was a member of the U.S. Copyright Office Section 108 Study Group. He was chair of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 2017 National Conference, and coordinated the fundraising for the IFLA 2016 scholarship program. In 2019, he was appointed a Senior Policy Fellow at the ¾«¶«´«Ã½, with a focus on copyright and licensing, and working with the ¾«¶«´«Ã½Policy Corps and the National Advocacy Network.

He was selected the 1997 Academic Librarian of the Year by the Association of College and Research Libraries and was the 2007 recipient of ALA’s Hugh Atkinson Memorial Award and the 2009 ¾«¶«´«Ã½Melvil Dewey Medal Award. In 2010, he received the honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Alberta. In 2015, he received the ¾«¶«´«Ã½Joseph W. Lippincott Award for "distinguished service to the profession of librarianship", and the Freedom to Read Foundation Roll of Honor Award. In 2016, he was awarded the Scroll of Appreciation by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). And he is the recipient of the 2020 Miles Conrad Award from the National Information Standards Organization and the National Federation of Advanced Information Services. He received the 2020 Intellectual Freedom Award from the New York Library Association.

In 2022, he was elected to honorary membership in the ¾«¶«´«Ã½ the ALA's highest honor, in recognition of outstanding contributions of lasting importance to libraries and librarianship. Also in 2022, he was selected as the winner of the L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award, which recognizes contributions of an individual or group that pursues and supports the Constitutional purpose of the U.S. Copyright Law, fair use and the public domain.

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Katherine Berry

I've been working in libraries for almost 10 years and am currently an Adult Services Supervisor at the Eugene Public Library in Eugene, OR. I have a background working with the justice-involved and those facing barriers to access. I'm excited to be part of group doing such important work!

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Frieda Afary, Philosophy M.A., M.L.I.S., is an Iranian American public librarian, translator, and writer in Los Angeles. She is the author of .

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Otter Bowman is an Adult Services Librarian at the Daniel Boone Regional Library in Columbia, Missouri. They served as president of the Missouri Library Association in 2023, and remain active in MLA as a past president and a member of MLA's award-winning Intellectual Freedom Committee. In addition to their work for the IFRT, Otter is a member of ALA's Chapter Relations Committee and is said to play a mean mandolin.

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Cynthia is currently an Associate Teaching Professor and Program Coordinator in the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

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Kristin Pekoll is a former YA librarian from Wisconsin. For eight years she provided professional and emotional support to library workers experiencing bans and challenges as the assistant director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. She is the author of published by ¾«¶«´«Ã½Editions in 2019. Currently she works with the Illinois Library Association as their Conference and Continuing Education Manager.

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Dr. Jennifer Steele is an Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at The University of Southern Mississippi, located in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She earned both her MLIS degree and her Ph.D. in Communication and Information Sciences from The University of Alabama, completing the degrees in 2013 and 2017 respectively. She has years of professional experience working as an academic librarian. Her research focuses on intellectual freedom, censorship, and information access.

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Matt Sylvain is a Systems Librarian and Head of the Systems & Digital Services Department at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's Claire T. Carney Library. He received his MLS from the University of North Carolina in 1999 and has experience with library technology, instruction, reference services, and circulation. Matt is a father, husband, lover of outdoor activities, avid jogger, and a casual birder.

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Eldon Ray James

While serving a sentence in federal prison I decided to become a librarian. I made that happen by graduating the University of Texas at Austin School of Information in 2007. By serendipity Dr. Loriene Roy, my advisor, became the ¾«¶«´«Ã½ president the year I was graduated, and she took me to Washington as a part of her presidential party. She introduced me to ¾«¶«´«Ã½and particularly a group called the Prisoners Forum, an interest group in ASCLA (ASGCLA, now defunct) where this formally incarcerated person found a family with correctional librarians.

One of those librarians shortly thereafter ask me to help write the Prisoners’ Right to Read and help move it though ALA. That experience led to the Intellectual Freedom Committee, Intellectual Freedom Round Table, and the Freedom to Read Foundation. ASCLA needed a liaison to all three and I volunteered. I have now served as a member of IFC and a director-at-large of IFRT and ASGCLA and a trustee of the Freedom to Read Foundation.

In ¾«¶«´«Ã½I lead and serve on various groups that create essential documents. I have served on the working group to update the IFLA Guidelines on prison library standards as well as the ¾«¶«´«Ã½Standards for Library Services for Incarcerated and Detained Individuals Working Group.

In 2022 I was honored with the FTRF’s Roll of Honor. I am the incoming chair of the Intellectual Freedom Committee.

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Steph Barnaby is the IDEAS (Information Delivery & Access Services) Librarian at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. She received her Masters' in Library and Information Science at San Jose State University's School of Information in 2018. She previously worked at the Fineman & Pappas Law Libraries at Boston University's School of Law as the Evening Library Supervisor. She loves books, vegan comfort food, traveling, meeting new people, coffee, music, and Doctor Who.

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Molly Meisenheimer is the Staff Development Specialist (SDS) for the Alameda County Library System in northern California. She received her MA in Adult Education from San Francisco State University and formerly worked as an SDS for Alameda County Social Services. Her passion is facilitating knowledge acquisition for those who serve our most in-need communities and was thrilled to join the library world in 2022. An avid reader, and lifelong library user, the library was a perfect fit for Molly. She attended her first conference at ¾«¶«´«Ã½Chicago 2023 and was instantly interested in supporting the fight for the freedom to read and to provide information to all. She quickly joined the IFRT and the Merritt Committee. In her spare time, she likes to run in the mountains of California for hours and hours, and her favorite animal is the Capybara.

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Amanda Sand (Vazquez) is Director at the Dubuque County Library District, a 2019 graduate of the San José State University iSchool, and has over a decade of experience working in public libraries in programming, technical services, and library administration. In her past position as Director of the Orange City Public Library, she gained first-hand experience with intellectual freedom issues through challenges to LGBTQ+ content in the library’s collection. These challenges propelled her to become involved with the Iowa Library Association and ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Round Table. Amanda is a past Freedom to Read Foundation Gordon M. Conable Scholar, chair of the Iowa Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee and the Chapter Councilor for Iowa.

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Marisa Eytalis is the Assistant Branch Manager and head of Adult Services at Sahara West Library in Las Vegas. She has over 15 years experience in libraries, including Marketing and Youth Services. She received her MLIS from San José State University in the fall of 2017. She is passionate about the freedom to read for all and has been on the Oboler Committee since 2023. She enjoys travelling, cooking, reading (of course!), guilty pleasure TV, and spending time with her husband of 20+ years, two daughters (10 and 13) and their two dogs Rosie (Dachshund mix) and Skylar (mini Sheepadoodle.)

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Edward Remus is an Assistant Professor and Social Sciences Librarian at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. He has previously served as a member of the Illinois Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee as well as of the IFRT Programming and Events Committee. He has presented at state and national conferences on the topic of how public and academic libraries can advance intellectual freedom by organizing public events featuring speakers with diverse and differing viewpoints on controversial topics. He is currently preparing a scholarly article on this topic for publication. He has also presented historical research on the topic of the political left and its support for the freedom of speech (and for civil liberties more broadly) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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Kristin is a Children's Librarian at the Naperville Public Library. She has been on the Intellectual Freedom Round Table since 2017, and has served on the Publications and Communications Committee the entire time, too. She grew up in rural Illinois, and now lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and two bad cats. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, watching Star Trek, and playing Baldur's Gate 3.

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Katie Spires