The American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Round Table is working with the LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund to help promote the existence of this trust fund. We want to be sure that it remains a known, and viable, resource for librarians who are facing discrimination and/or censorship challenges and who may benefit from applying to the Merritt Fund for personal financial assistance under extreme circumstances.

Merritt Fund Committee

of the Intellectual Freedom Round Table

At the urging of David Cohen, the Intellectual Freedom Round Table voted in 2004 to create an ad hoc committee to help promote the existence of LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund. A 2008 vote by the IFRT membership formalized the Merritt Fund Promotion Committee. We want to be sure that it remains a known, and viable, resource for librarians who are facing discrimination and/or censorship challenges and who may benefit from applying to the Merritt Fund for personal financial assistance under extreme circumstances.

We are engaging in promotional efforts aimed at increasing the Web presence of the Merritt Fund. If you are connected to an organization that deals directly with librarians, please consider linking to the Merritt Fund site.

To use the Merritt Fund logo as a tag, copy and paste this text into your HTML Web page where you want the Merritt Humanitarian Fund icon to appear.

<DIV align=center><FONT size=-1><A href="http://www.merrittfund.org/"><IMG class="" style="WIDTH: 234px; HEIGHT: 49px" height=26 alt="Merritt Fund Logo" src="Merritt_Fund_Logo.jpg" width=124 border=0 ASSETID="516916"></A><BR></FONT></DIV>

It will look like this:

The following is additional language that could be used to describe the Web link:

The LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund was established by the American Library Association in 1970 as a special trust in memory of Dr. LeRoy C. Merritt. It is devoted to the support, maintenance, medical care, and welfare of librarians and library workers who, in the Trustees’ opinion, are:

Denied employment rights or discriminated against on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, color, creed, religion, age, disability, or place of national origin; or
Denied employment rights because of defense of intellectual freedom; that is, threatened with loss of employment or discharged because of their stand for the cause of intellectual freedom, including promotion of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, the freedom of librarians to select items for their collections from all the world’s written and recorded information, and defense of privacy rights.

A full description of the Fund, including instructions on qualifications for assistance, how to apply, and a profile of Dr. Merritt are all available at http://www.merrittfund.org/.

Note: The Merritt Fund is supported solely by donations and contributions from concerned groups and individuals. Contributions to the Merritt Fund are not tax-exempt, because they are used to give direct aid to individuals without reference to Internal Revenue Service requirements regarding tax-exempt organizations. Hence, contributions do not qualify as personal tax dedications for donors.

A secure online form, a Word form, and a PDF form are available. Donations should be sent to: LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund, 50 East Huron, Chicago, IL 60611. Make check payable to LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund. (Please do not include contribution to the Merritt Fund in ALA dues or other similar checks to the American Library Association.).

For more information on how to donate to the Merritt Fund, contact Jonathan Kelley at 800-545-2433, ext. 4226; e-mail: merrittfund@ala.org.

Thank you for considering this request, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions,

Jim Kuhn, chair
Merritt Fund Committee of the Intellectual Freedom Round Table

Links to non-ALA sites have been provided because these sites may have information of interest. Neither the American Library Association nor the Intellectual Freedom Round Table necessarily endorses the views expressed or the facts presented on these sites; and furthermore, ALA and IFRT do not endorse any commercial products that may be advertised or available on these sites.