Introduction - The Library Bill of Rights - Editorial

Library Trends, Summer, 1996 by Wayne A. Wiegand

Introduction

SOMETIMES I WORRY ABOUT THE PROFESSION. From my perspective, there seems to be a tendency to insulate ourselves from new ideas that are driving the intellectual world to which we are connected. Perhaps worse, within the profession we have evolved a unique discourse with a logic of its own that outsiders often find unpersuasive. For example, the December issue of American Libraries contains a feature article entitled "12 Ways Libraries are Good for the Country" (1995, pp. 1113-19). To illustrate the point about our insulated professional world, let me sample a few of these "ways."

The first is labeled "Libraries Inform Citizens," and states that "democracy and libraries have a symbiotic relationship. It would be impossible to have one without the other" (p. 1114). The third argues that "by making all its resources equally available to all members of its community, regardless of income, class, or other factors, the library levels the playing field" (p. 1115). The ninth asserts that at a time when drugs, teenage promiscuity, violence, and divorce tear at the fabric of family values, "the American family's best friend, the library, has stepped into the breach with services guaranteed to hone coping skills" (p. 1118). The tenth is titled "Libraries Offend Everyone." A "willingness" a "duty" to "offend connotes a tolerance and a willingness to look at all sides of an issue that would be good for the nation in any context. It is particularly valuable when combined with the egalitarianism and openness that characterize libraries" (p. 1118).

All of these statements are offered as if they were absolute truths, yet all of the statements are unsupported by any proof, do not appear to have been subject to any scholarly scrutiny and, as far as I can tell, are not based on any research. These days I spend much of my time reading scholarship grounded in race, class, gender, Third World, and sexual orientation perspectives that argue terms like "democracy," "family values," and "tolerance" are highly contested and radically contingent. Whether subjected to Michel Foucault's (1972) archaeology of knowledge, Barbara Hernstein Smith's (1988) idea that all values are radically contingent, Antonio Gramsci's (1971) concept of cultural hegemony, Sandra Harding's (1991) argument for feminist standpoint theory, or Pierre Bourdieu's (1986) definition of specific taste cultures, the absolutes built into statements like those quoted above will not stand up. It seems that rather than harnessing such powerful ideas to identify an ever-elusive "essence" of librarianship (Budd, 1995), the library profession has, for several generations now, been content not to engage in debate with outside experts, not to leave its insulated world.

In my own research and teaching, I attempt to bring these perspectives to bear on the history of this profession. I tell students that solid research exists to demonstrate that libraries have not only survived in totalitarian countries in this century, often they prospered (Stieg, 1992). I tell them about Annie McPheeters (1988), whose life as a black professional librarian bears witness to the fact that the African-Americans she struggled so hard to serve never enjoyed a level playing field. I also cite research that proves lesbigay families are much less likely than conventional heterosexual couples to find materials in the library to help them cope (Bryant, 1995). And from my own research I have discovered that American libraries have historically not been characterized by egalitarianism and openness (Wiegand, 1993).

But nowhere are the unquestioned absolutes more evident than in the discourse surrounding the Library Bill of Rights. For much of my adult life I have listened to the profession preach--largely to itself, I think--the benefits of the Library Bill of Rights. Do not misunderstand; history shows (and several of the historical pieces in this issue of Library Trends validate) that the Library Bill of Rights has done much good. But, by the last decade of the twentieth century, this discourse seems to have evolved a reality of its own that declines to engage the powerful ideas being debated in a broader intellectual world. And within a cocoon-like self-constructed reality, librarians unknowingly (sometimes knowingly, unfortunately) hide from themselves their personal hierarchy of values that frames their materials acquisition, programming, and outreach decisions.

Seldom has the profession actively sought out scholars representing alternative perspectives to debate the validity of principles enunciated in the Library Bill of Rights. Several years ago I witnessed the effect of this insulated discourse at an ALA meeting. In a well-delivered speech, one of the profession's high profile advocates of intellectual freedom waxed eloquent about the Library Bill of Rights. After he finished, someone from the audience asked what a local suburban public library--which had the Library Bill of Rights written into its collection development policy--should do about a challenge it was experiencing at the time against the controversial rap group 2 Live Crew. Without hesitation, he argued that because 2 Live Crew's music was not covered in conventional library reviewing sources, the library had no obligation to stock "that crap" (his words, not mine).