Libraries are NOT Neutral

Yesterday, the NYT ran an opinion piece entitled "The Battle for the Soul of the Library," by Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank. I am a subscriber but I am not linking to it here. I have given you what you need to look it up at your library if you want to.

In this essay, Dr. Kurtz argues for why libraries must be neutral and why "woke" librarians are ruining libraries. 

If you read this blog, even just occasionally, you should know that I disagree with this point of view, and in fact, make the statement that Libraries are NOT Neutral part of my personal mission statement. You can read that statement here on my Recent and Upcoming Presentations page.

Robin and I discuss this with every library we meet with as part of our Actively Anti-Racist Service to Leisure Readers training program, one of which we are doing this morning. And every single time, we get questions that make us defend our "Libraries are not neutral" stance.

Rather than get upset at people for not agreeing with us, Robin and I go all in on the fact that discussing these issues is hard, and when people challenge us, it means they are starting to get uncomfortable with the things they thought they knew and could count on. Until you get uncomfortable, change cannot happen. 

That being said, I also highly recommend you read this post, a summary of a program at ALA by Alison Macrina. Click through to the post for my notes and all the links to Macrina and her work with the Library Freedom Project.

While Robin and I were already arguing about how hiding behind libraries having to be neutral was harmful, but Macrina helped us to understand why our society's fetishization of the First Amendment has allowed the fringes to not only be louder, but hold more power. There are links to further reading in that post as well.

That being said, I know not everyone will click through and read that longer piece, so I have found something that summarizes why libraries are NOT Neutral in a Tweet, and it was in direct response to the essay in the NYT.

Overholt is a curator of early books and manuscripts at Harvard.

I think he succinctly get at the heart of the issue. So, I have added this tweet, with citation to all of my program with Robin going forward. I still have the link to the longer post about Macrina's program in my slides, but this is the reason libraries cannot be neutral. 

To hide behind neutrality is to not acknowledge that every single book we add or delete from our collections is a decision by a human. A professional who is trained in crafting a collection. If libraries were ever neutral they would have added every single book that came out automatically. Think about that. We don't do that and we never have. 

So if we are already picking and choosing what books we have in our collections, we need to do it with a mindset that actively tries to dismantle systemic oppression, not uphold it. 

I know this statement makes many uncomfortable because this neutrality interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights has become entrenched. But systemic oppression is real and dismantling it will not only be hard and take time, but it will also require everyone get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Even I had to struggle to get to this place of rejecting neutrality. But you have to start addressing it with yourself before you can help others.