The draft (links below) below represents librarian principles concerning the management and protection of traditional cultural expressions. Its purpose is to help librarians appreciate the unique nature of indigenous culture and to highlight ways that librarians can better manage traditional cultural expressions in their collections and share expertise with cultures that choose to self manage their own cultural heritage. This document has been developed through a participatory process of collaboration among librarians, archivists and representatives from indigenous communities within the United States. Our intent is to solicit feedback from all interested parties to improve the document and to continue to build a broader shared understanding.  Ultimately the principles will be brought to ALA Council for endorsement as ALA policy.

We welcome your feedback and suggestions for improvement. Please use the comment box within the blog post to leave feedback on the draft, or send an email to OITP’s Carrie Russell at crussell {at} alawash.org. We’d like to have initial comments by the end of June, so that we may incorporate and iterate a new draft for review at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago in July 2009.  An open hearing to review the latest draft has been scheduled for 3:30pm – 5:30pm on Sunday, July 12th.

Members of the Drafting Team:

Peggy Bulgar (American Folklife Center)
Lori Driscoll (International Copyright Advocate)
Carlene Engstrom (American Indian Library Association)
Jonathan Franklin (International Copyright Advocate)
Eric Kansa (Executive Director, Information and Service Design Program, School of Information, UC-Berkeley)
Kay Mathieson (Assistant Professor, School of Information Resources and Library Science, University of Arizona)
Michael Miller (Coordinator of Access Services, Queens College-CUNY)
Jennifer O’Neal (National Museum of the American Indian)
Janice Pilch (International Copyright Advocate)
Loriene Roy (ALA Past President and Professor, School of Information, University of Texas)
Barbara Stripling (Intellectual Freedom Round Table)
Winston Tabb (International Federation of Library Associations, IFLA)
Linda Wynne (Alaska State Library Association)

OITP Staff: Carrie Russell, Jennifer Hendrix, Timothy Vollmer

TCE Library Principles DRAFT (download PDF)
TCE Library Principles DRAFT (open in Scribd)