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

Library Trends, Wntr, 2008 by Juris Dilevko

Moreover, once acquired, these alternative materials should not fall prey to the traditional "condescending, curator-like, rubber-gloves-and-forceps-mentality" that consigned them to "glass cases" and "padlocked vaults," effectively relegating them to archival status in the same way that "intriguing cadavers [were] gathered and then pickled and frozen for later study by anatomists" (Berman, 1976, p. 346). Instead, they should be placed on "open shelves" because the "articles in Radical America, Women, and Tricontinental Magazine are just as fitting and citable for term papers and dissertations as material culled from Foreign Affairs, Time, and Business Week" (Berman, 1976, p. 346). Finally, libraries should avoid relying on the "pathetic" bibliographic data supplied by the Library of Congress or the Online Computer Library Center to catalog purchased alternative materials, since this data lacked "sufficient subject headings and other added entries"; failed "to adequately and helpfully indicate special features or content-elements not discernible from the title alone"; and omitted "subject terms that faithfully and precisely express the content of the work in familiar, unbiased language" (Berman, 1982, p. 31).

Properly understood, collection development was a multifaceted concept that included the selection of items, their display, and appropriate cataloging. All these elements needed to be approached from a "dynamic, responsive" (Berman, 1976, p. 349) perspective the goal of which was substantive neutrality, which would meaningfully expand the conformist boundaries of what Alan Nadel (1995) referred to as "containment culture" (p. 4). Only in this way could libraries show that they had "opt[ed] for people, participation, compassion, and engagement" (Berman, 1976, p. 344)--the kind of values that informed Synergy, one of the first North American publications devoted to alerting librarians about alternative-press books and magazines. Founded in 1967, Synergy not only excoriated librarians for being "passive" and soporific consumers in an "information marketplace" controlled by "big publishers" who only paid attention to "alternative press related topics" when they "sensed profit," but also informed them about how the tools that they ordinarily used to select books and magazines were "rear-view mirrors" that had little connection with actual user interests (Samek, 2001, p. 47).

But the call for what Berman (1976) identified as "dynamic, responsive" libraries that gave priority "to the people" (p. 349) was interpreted by others in the 1960s in an entirely different way. This was particularly true when it came to collection development. For the BCPL, responsiveness was conceptualized as a "Give 'Em What They Want" approach, a philosophy that at first glance appeared to have much in common with Berman's prioritization of "the people," but when all was said and done turned out to be its antithesis. As described by BCPL's senior administrators, Charlie Robinson and Jean-Barry Molz, "Give 'Em What They Want" dispensed with attempting to create a "good" library--"We soon saw that [trying to do so] was ridiculous. It was insane"--in favor of buying multiple copies of bestsellers (Pearl, 1996, p. 136). For the BCPL, responsiveness meant being "the best seller library, or the bookstore library" (Pearl, 1996, p. 136). Making circulation statistics the main criteria by which to judge a book's value, Robinson spoke caustically about libraries' responsibility to serve anyone else but middle-class users interested in "maintaining their lawns" and "heat pumps" (Pearl, 1996, pp. 136, 137). If such materials were what customers wanted, "what was the point of giving them what they didn't want?" such as "every book about the Vietnam War ever published.... [which] sat on the shelf" or sleep-inducing "great literature" (Pearl, 1996, pp. 137, 138). Disdainfully noting that "the library profession is full of closet social workers" who had studied impractical "philosophical issues" in graduate library degree programs, he also remarked that "libraries can't do anything about" such "quality-of-life issues" as "jobs, housing, and education," much like McDonald's can't do anything about "those people who can't afford its hamburgers" (Pearl, 1996, p. 138).