In honor of Freedom of Information Day earlier this month, we spoke to two faculty members of the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) about the importance of the Act the day commemorates, and how those outside the library profession can access information from the government.
“The Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] connects to a lot of things related to archives and records management in the public sector,” says SLIS Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Library and Information Science: Archives Management and History dual degree program, Adam Kriesberg.
The FOIA was enacted in the 1960s during the Johnson administration and revised in the wake of the Watergate scandal. “What it reflects is a recognition by Congress that the public has a right to know what the government is up to,” says Kriesberg. “That aligns with a core archival concept. We save these records in order to know what the government did so that we can hold them accountable.”
Record keeping and access to those records are particularly important in times when government transparency is a concern, such as the era of Watergate, President Nixon, and the Vietnam War.
“The public felt they weren’t being told the whole story of what was happening in Vietnam. FOIA was updated to reflect the evolving relationship between secrecy and access to information about government activities,” Kriesberg says.
What Does the Freedom of Information Act Mean?
FOIA allows any US citizen the opportunity to request information from any federal agency. An agency can claim an exemption for national security, but it is still an important aspect of larger transparency goals.
“Even under the best circumstances, government agencies view FOIA as low on the priority list, because it doesn’t contribute to their primary mission,” notes Kriesberg, though to maintain legal compliance, agencies must respond to all requests within a given time frame. “The biggest challenge to FOIA is the amount of staff assigned to handle this work and the amount of time it takes to respond to requests.”
During the Obama administration, there were attempts to streamline the FOIA request process. Some agencies created FOIA reading rooms: websites where they post information previously released under FOIA, to avoid the necessity of duplicate requests. Two such reading rooms are maintained by the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Archive.
The fact that there is a procedure (albeit a complicated one) to request such documents, Kriesberg says, is “a core principle of our democracy. Elected and appointed officials have accountability to the public. The US federal government is probably the most complex bureaucracy [in the world], but this is one way to learn what is going on.”
Without FOIA, even government records not restricted for national security reasons can take years to be released publicly. Presidential records are sealed for five years after a president’s term in office. The staff at the national archive does an initial organization, creating records descriptions and metadata to make them legible. However, there is a technique to craft a FOIA request.
“It needs to be reasonable,” says Kriesberg. “You can’t ask for all the records. You need specificity: you are interested in this particular decision, or communication between these two senior officials.”
Barriers to Information
The current federal administration has put up additional barriers to people seeking information under FOIA.
“There is a limit of time in which you are supposed to hear back, at least with confirmation of receipt of a request,” notes Kriesberg. “There have been reports of agencies not responding, or taking additional time.”
Recently, in an effort to reduce the number of active FOIA requests, a message was sent to everyone with a pending request requiring them to respond within a week with a statement of continued interest, or else the request would be closed.
“This put an additional communication burden back on the requester, in the hopes of being able to eliminate those requests,” notes Kriesberg.
In addition, every state has its own version of FOIA (or FOIL, Freedom of Information Law, as it is referred to in New York), which can be a challenge to navigate. Many contemporary political reporting outlets use FOIA to request information from the government that isn’t released in a timely fashion. In some cases, the lack of response from a FOIA request becomes, in itself, the story, as seen earlier this year in North Carolina, after a request for information about increased activity by ICE was not fulfilled.
Freedom of Information for Children and Young Adults
“Young people also have intellectual freedom rights,” notes SLIS Professor Amy Pattee. “Overlooking those rights impacts young people and librarians.”
In November 2025, the Massachusetts Senate passed a bill guarding against politically motivated book bans. “It doesn’t ban book challenges, but it protects librarians in the event of book challenges,” says Pattee, noting that librarians have been fired for refusing to remove books from shelves.
“Young people have the same First Amendment rights that we have, but they tend to be mitigated under the auspices of protection,” Pattee says. Preventing young people from unwittingly viewing obscene or pornographic material has been used as a “dog whistle”: an excuse to limit intellectual freedom by creating policies that restrict access in order to meet some states’ new definitions of obscenity.
Those new definitions, and how they are applied, have the potential to restrict access to material that is not obscene, but may fall under categories that parents in the community take as personally offensive: in particular, literature for young people with LGBTQIA+ characters.
“If a librarian’s job can be threatened, or if they can be prosecuted for sharing what is defined as obscene material and making it available to minors, then there is an anti-incentive to even having that material in the library,” says Pattee.
The first step, in this case, is getting the book into the library. “It may end up in the adult section [as a response to a challenge]. Are young people permitted to check out books from the adult section, or are they restricted to only juvenile material?” These are part of collection development policies that all librarians must consider, though it is particularly challenging for librarians in southern states who must contend with restrictive laws.
“I wouldn’t advocate breaking the law, but I would think about what you can do. Some of that has to do with organizing the library, ensuring that material does make its way into the library, even if it’s in the Adult section, and advocating for freer access for young people via unrestricted library cards. In the end, your library should live or die by its collection development policy. You can’t undermine state law, but you can help to create policy that makes the circumstances as equitable as possible,” says Pattee.
Civic Engagement and FOIA
As always, the best approach is to encourage people to read the book. In addition, librarians and members of the public can participate in any public meeting that discusses collections of material.
“Bear witness, and speak up if allowed and encouraged,” says Pattee. “Because these things tend to happen in rooms that are intermittently open and closed, it’s important to get in the door when we can. Be aware of the types of things happening in your community.”