The existing reference literature on intellectual freedom tends to focus on topics such as government censorship of books, the internet, and political speech. This has also been the focus of intellectual freedom scholars among professional librarians in the United States and Canada. There has been a shift in recent years, and intellectual freedom is now being looked at from a wider range of theoretical perspectives and in connection with a wider range of cultural topics. The Handbook of Intellectual Freedom is a reference work that captures this recent growth in the field. It provides a grounding in the philosophical, historical, and legal development of the concept of intellectual freedom by providing current thinking on a wide range of intellectual freedom concepts, cases, and controversies.

21 invited articles focus on topics including threats to intellectual freedom, academic freedom, the arts, the Internet, censorship along with connections to contemporary social issues and institutions, and historical and cultural theories.