Toni Samek

Dr. Toni Samek is a Professor and former Chair at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, where she has taught since 1994. Toni’s books include: Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility in American Librarianship 1967 to 1974; Librarianship and Human Rights: A twenty-first century guide; She Was a Booklegger: Remembering Celeste West; Information Ethics, Globalization and Citizenship: Essays on Ideas to Praxis; and, Minds Alive: Libraries and Archives Now. Her scholarship has appeared in translation in such countries as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Japan, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. Toni twice convened the Canadian Library Association’s Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom and served two consecutive terms on the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee. Most recently she served on the Expressive Freedom Advisory Group at the University of Alberta and the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Toni received the debut Library Journal Teaching Award in 2007, a Faculty of Education Graduate Teaching Award in 2009, and the 3M National Teaching Fellowship from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in 2012. In 2013, Toni was honoured with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library and Information Studies Distinguished Alumna Award. She is the recipient of the 2017 Library Association of Alberta President’s Award, which recognizes the efforts of an individual who has made a major impact on a province-wide basis in the library field in Alberta.