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1960s AD - Decade

Library Trends, Summer, 1996 by Toni Samek

When Wayne Wiegand asked this author to participate in the symposium on the utility of the Library Bill of Rights, at first there was some hesitation to accept. While my research on librarianship and the alternative press movement from 1967 to 1973 is closely connected to the subject of the utility of the Library Bill of Rights in the 1960s, there had been no thought of framing this work in Wayne's terms. The more the idea was thought about, however, the more intriguing the idea became of examining the Library Bill of Rights from its inception to the present. This author saw that the full historical context of the Library Bill of Rights gave the subject more power. As a result, the research findings were more provocative in light of other findings, and so the offer was accepted.

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This article explores American librarianship's treatment of the Library Bill of Rights between approximately 1967 and 1973. The topic comprises a piece of librarianship's intellectual and cultural history that continues to prompt basic philosophical questions concerning librarianship's professional jurisdiction and intellectual freedom. In addition, the essay supplements Baldwin's lead article, "The Library Bill of Rights: A Critique" (in this issue of Library Trends), which takes a legal perspective on the contemporary Library Bill of Rights. His three introductory points serve to contextualize his approach to the Library Bill of Rights.

First, Baldwin states that there are "tensions" and "contradictions" that reduce the "persuasive force" of the Library Bill of Rights. His article in this issue of Library Trends addresses this macro issue by treating three micro themes: (1) "deeply felt notions about intellectual freedom"; (2) "the more parochial interests of librarians"; and (3) "legal protection against government." This article primarily treats the first theme--i.e., deeply felt notions about intellectual freedom.

Second, Baldwin notes in his article that "libraries are forums for information and ideas," then asks "for whom, and for what?" This author's own research was prompted by the same basic question, but framed in slightly different terms--i.e., can a case be made for viewing the library as a forum for the production and reproduction of culture? Can a case be made for viewing the library as an institution in and through which ideology flows, is produced, and is perpetuated?

Third, Baldwin states that the Library Bill of Rights offers "multiple interpretations" and suggests that this is a flaw. While this is a critical issue, there is more concern with exploring how these interpretations affect librarians' behavior. This article introduces two vying interpretations of the utility of the Library Bill of Rights, then examines the conflict surrounding these interpretations in order to probe their impact on the profession's viability.

Having thus established three basic ways in which this author's own effort differs from Baldwin's perspective on the Library Bill of Rights, there is an additional point not covered by Baldwin. Although he says he offers the reader a "dispassionate attempt to point out the weaknesses of the Library Bill of Rights" how dispassionate is he? Clearly he has notions of intellectual freedom. For instance, when he states that he fails to understand why a library faced with "scarce or inadequate resources" must accommodate "mushroom hunters or Holocaust deniers," he appears to have views on the subject. But has he really understood the library profession's public notion and professional conception of intellectual freedom and its connection to the Library Bill of Rights?

In the early 1970s, David K. Berninghausen, director of the Minnesota library school and a former chairman of the American Library Association's (ALA) Intellectual Freedom Committee, had a comfortable position in the ALA establishment. Soon thereafter, however, he became a central figure in one of the most memorable conflicts in ALA history. Berninghausen did not burn a book, denounce the time-honored Melvil Dewey, or sully the name of the venerable Library of Congress. But what he did caused a stir nonetheless. In an article published in a 1972 issue of library Journal entitled "Antithesis in Librarianship: Social Responsibility vs. the library Bill of Rights," he took on librarianship's most sensitive subject--intellectual freedom and the Library Bill of Rights.

In Berninghausen's view, the Library Bill of Rights served to both codify and standardize a purist moral stance on intellectual freedom by which impartiality and neutrality on nonliterary issues served as the central principle of the profession. Berninghausen's portrayal of the role of a neutral stance on intellectual freedom as the ethic of the profession reinforces Louise Robbins's proposition that "pluralist democracy" played a large role in shaping the profession's notion of intellectual freedom in the 1950s. During the McCarthy period, Berninghausen felt that academic freedom and the freedom to read were threatened from the right. But in the 1960s and 1970s, he felt the threat to intellectual freedom also came from the new left. The concept of "social responsibility" that emerged in the context of librarianship in the late 1960s, for example, was in Berninghausen's opinion, a new left tactic that threatened ALA's traditional neutrality and purpose.

1960s AD - Decade

Library Trends, Summer, 1996 by Toni Samek

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