Cal State L.A. librarian honored for
Song receives Zoia Horn Intellectual Freedom Award
Los Angeles, CA –
Recognized for his devotion to librarianship and dedication to resisting
censorship, Cal State L.A.’s Yongyi Song (El Monte resident) was
recently presented the California Library Association’s (CLA) 2011
Zoia Horn Intellectual Freedom Award.
Song—a technical services librarian at the John F. Kennedy Memorial
Library on the CSULA campus—received the award at the CLA gala ceremony
on Nov. 11 in the Pasadena Public Library.
In a letter to Song, CLA’s President Paymaneh Maghsoudi
wrote: ”Your courageous fight against censorship in publishing The
Cultural Revolution Database and your subsequent projects have
earned the esteem of your California library colleagues.”
A native of Shanghai, Song is well-known within the academic community
of China studies. He has long devoted himself to preserving the true
history of China’s Cultural Revolution and combating government
censorship through myriad publications, including bibliographies and
source books. Song was twice jailed by the Chinese authorities—once
during the Cultural Revolution for organizing an underground reading
club, and again in 1999, for collecting primary sources on the
revolution.
Among his many books and articles, Song is a coauthor with other
librarians of several books and monographs, The Cultural Revolution:
A Bibliography, 1966-1996 (Harvard-Yenching Library, 1998),
Chinese Cultural Revolution Database and Chinese Anti-Rightist
Campaign Database online and CD-ROMs (Chinese University of
Hong Kong, 2002-2010), and The Historical Dictionary of Chinese
Cultural Revolution (Scarecrow, 2006).
His accolades include The 21st Century Librarian National Award by
Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies in 2004, and the
Paul Howard Award for Courage by the American Library Association in
2005.
Song received a master’s degree in library and information science from
Indiana University at Bloomington in 1995, a master’s degree in Oriental
literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1992, and a
bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Institute of Education in 1981.
The Zoia Horn Intellectual Freedom Award honors California people,
groups and organizations that have made significant contributions to
intellectual freedom.
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his courageous fight against
censorship
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