An alternative vision of librarianship: James Danky and the sociocultural politics of collection development

Library Trends, Wntr, 2008 by Juris Dilevko

ABSTRACT

The work of James P. Danky, longtime librarian at the Wisconsin Historical Society, is situated within the intellectual context of collection-development practices. Danky's belief in the value of alternative periodicals--and the lengths that he went to identify and acquire them--may be interpreted as a rejection of increasingly mechanical and generic ways to develop library collections. Reliance on centralized selection procedures, approval plans, and serials vendors was not only tantamount to the "disintegration of librarians as sources of expertise," but also structurally privileged books and serials from mainstream publishers. The biennial Alternative Library Literature (1982-2001), which Danky coedited with Sanford Berman, is compared with the annual Library Lit.--The Best of(1970-1990) to illuminate the way in which contrasting philosophical approaches to the selection of anthology articles may be interpreted as a microcosm of larger issues in collection development.

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In the middle and late 1960s, three structurally intertwined events altered the practice of collection development in public and academic libraries in the United States. Taken together, these events moved collection development away from the realm of what could be described as item "selection" on a title-by-title basis by subject specialists into the realm of item "purchasing" (Harris, 1970, p. 53). First, many large and midsized public libraries with multiple branches instituted the practice of centralized selection, whereby relatively low-paid paraprofessionals in consolidated acquisitions departments adhered to a demand-driven philosophy embodied in the phrase "Give 'Em What They Want," which had its origins at the Baltimore County (Maryland) Public Library (BCPL). Second, many academic libraries outsourced their monograph purchases to vendors who provided them with books through approval plans, defined as "an acquisitions method under which a library receives regular shipments of new titles selected by a dealer, based on a profile of library collection interests, with the right to return what it decides not to buy" (Nardini, 2003, p. 133). Third, academic and public libraries increasingly entrusted their periodical purchases to serials vendors or subscription agents, thus avoiding direct contact with publishers of journals and magazines. As these changes became normative throughout the last three decades of the twentieth century, they contributed to a situation whereby alternative books and periodicals from small presses were not easily found in many American libraries.

Throughout his more than thirty-year career (1973-2007) at the Wisconsin Historical Society as an Order Librarian; Newspapers and Periodicals Librarian; Assistant Librarian for Research and Development; and founding codirector of the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America, James P. Danky looked askance at the philosophies associated with serials vendors, monographic approval plans, and the "Give 'Em What They Want" approach, believing that they significantly impoverished the cumulated written record available at the nation's libraries by overlooking material that was not readily available through convenient channels. Danky's academic interests were primarily historical--an effort to extend, deepen, and thus problematize the public's awareness of neglected historical sources that told a story that ran counter to received wisdom in many fields. As coeditor of volumes such as Women in Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Danky & Wiegand, 2006) ; African-American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography (Danky & Hady, 1998); The German-American Radical Press: The Shaping of a Left Political Culture, 1850-1940 (Shore, Fones-Wolf, & Danky, 1992); and Native American Periodicals and Newspapers, 1828-1982: Bibliography, Publishing Record, and Holdings (Danky & Hady, 1984), he displayed meticulous scholarship and an abiding passion for opening new perspectives on American life and culture. But underlying his historical pursuits was the recognition that collecting contemporary alternative and small-press publications was key to providing an in-depth picture of current social, cultural, and political issues and debates (e.g., Campbell, Bowles, & Danky, 1984a, 1984b; Danky, 1974, 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1996a; Danky & Hennessy, 1986; Danky & Shore, 1982; Hady & Danky, 1979; Hunter & Danky, 1986). For him, these publications represented not only the cornerstone of any informed historical portrait of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century written in the future, but also the essence of librarianship, since they alone were capable of interrogating mainstream publications that comprised the bulk of materials available at libraries. In short, collecting alternative materials was the responsibility of all librarians if they wanted to give full meaning to concepts such as equality, diversity, and substantive neutrality. If only mainstream publications were collected, Danky felt, substantive neutrality was impossible because, while such publications ventured to the left or the right of conventional wisdom on any given topic, they never went beyond a safe middle range of opinion that represented a consensus status quo. Collecting alternative materials--those on the margins of accepted contemporary discourse--was therefore a necessary part of librarianship's commitment to substantive neutrality. It was difficult work that obligated librarians to look beyond serials vendors, approval plans, and BCPL-inspired rhetoric.