Library Affairs at SIUC and the SIU Press have a long history of cooperation, epitomized, perhaps, by the Press's publication the three volumes of Ralph E. McCoy's annotated Freedom of the Press bibliography. McCoy, now a resident of Blacksburg, Virginia, is Emeritus Dean of Library Affairs and is known internationally for both his achievements in librarianship and his First Amendment Freedoms scholarship. The private collection of First Amendment materials McCoy acquired in the course of his research is now a part of the First Amendment Freedoms research collection in the Library's Special Collections area and is used by scholars world-wide. Making the citations, annotations, and, where possible, full texts available via electronic networking is a goal which will aid scholarship, and, we believe, the Library and the Press. Please read important information about the copyright .
Censorship creates an eternal crisis.
Geographically, Freedom of the Press includes entries for the United States and Great Britain as well as Ireland, Canada, India, Australia, and other present and former Commonwealth countries. In the next century William Prynne's Histrio-Mastix , a criticism of the immorality of the English stage, was burned by the common hangman in 1633, and for criticizing the queen, Prynne was imprisoned, pilloried, and shorn of his ears. In 1690 the first American newspaper, Publick Occurrances , was suppressed after the first issue. The wide range of references includes John Milton's Areopagetica , the John Peter Zenger case which established notable precedence for a free press in America, and the murder of Elijah Lovejoy when he attempted to protect his printing press against a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois. The subject index offers the researcher easy reference to court decisions which have reshaped Anglo-American laws and our response to plays, movies, such books as D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and John Cleland's Fanny Hill , and decisions on libel and invasion of privacy.