Packed with Political Planks.

This article focuses on the annual conference of the American Library Association in Orlando, Florida in June 2004. While many stood on line at the annual conference to buy librarian action figure dolls, which openly mock the standard iconography of librarians shushing their patrons, plenty also crowded into sessions that demonstrated the other side of a librarian's public image. Librarians have an undeserved reputation for timidity and being bookish and intellectual. They also have a well-deserved reputation for being stable, scholarly, and devoted to good causes. Good causes speckled the ALA agenda. There was the opening keynote by counter-terrorism adviser turned whistle-blower author Richard Clarke, which ended with a call to arms for librarians to support and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, both foreign and domestic, followed by a standing ovation. He said: "Never in the history of counter-terrorism have I ever heard of any reason to go looking in library records. But having this provision in the Patriot Act has had a chilling effect on those who may use them. If we give up our civil rights and civil liberties to fight the jihadists, then they will have won."