Gerald Hodges Intellectual Freedom Chapter Relations Award

The Gerald Hodges Intellectual Freedom Chapter Relations Award consists of a citation and $1,000 and recognizes an intellectual freedom focused organization that has developed a strong multi-year, ongoing program or a single, one-year project that exemplifies support for intellectual freedom, patron confidentiality, and anti-censorship efforts.

The award is named after Gerald Hodges, who joined the ALA staff in 1989 as director of membership services and the Chapter Relations Office. Hodges was the associate director of communications and marketing at his death in 2006, but intellectual freedom and chapter relations were still his passions. A charter member of the ALA Legacy Society, he willed a portion of his estate to support ALA's intellectual freedom efforts. Memorial contributions in recognition of Hodges came from many friends, colleagues and ALA chapters following the establishment of the Gerald Hodges Fund.

The Hodges Award is administered by the Coalition Building Committee which recognizes that effective coalition building and collaboration between organizations provide the necessary framework to defend censorship at the ground level.

Past award recipients

Support the award with a $25, $50, $100, or $250 donation to IFRT.

Criteria

• An ALA chapter or other qualified organization has been unusually successful in coalition-building so that allied groups are marshaled effectively to support intellectual freedom at the national, state or regional level.

• An ALA chapter or other qualified organization has done an exemplary PR task in promoting awareness of intellectual freedom issues at the national, state or region level.

• A project has been effective in recruiting activists within and outside of librarianship to work on intellectual freedom projects.

• A structure has been conceived that markedly enhances the continuity and effectiveness of the organization's efforts in intellectual freedom.

• A chapter, etc. has succeeded in galvanizing to an unusual extent support for intellectual freedom within a state chapter.

• An chapter, etc. has intervened with special effectiveness in an intellectual freedom crisis at the national, state or regional level. Such intervention should, preferably, have resulted in a clear victory over the forces of censorship.

• Projects that can be generalized to other chapters, etc. will merit special attention of the Gerald Hodges Intellectual Freedom Chapter Relations Award.