REVIEW: REVOLTING LIBRARIANS REDUX
Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out. Edited by Katia Roberto and Jessamyn West. McFarland [Box 611, Jefferson, NC., 28640], 2003. Postpaid price $39.00. Order line 1-800 253 2187. Reviewed by Marylaine Block
So, who are these radical librarians and why should we care about their opinions? Judging from this book, they are mostly young, creative, anti-authoritarian, and out to change the world, the sooner the better. They are true believers of the most idealistic goals of the profession, that libraries should be instruments of democracy, offering access for all to the opportunity to learn independently and advance themselves in society
They question authority, demand input into policy decisions, and remind directors, loudly and often, about the people the library is failing to serve. They complain about politically safe compromises that diminish service. They're impatient with process, with endless committee meetings, with the time-consuming effort of building support for their ideas both inside and outside the library; they just want to get on with putting their ideas and ideals into practice. They're passionate, and they're convinced they're right.
Which means they are probably a pain in the neck for administrators to deal with. The library director who demoted Sanford Berman does not seem to have dealt with the situation well, but even the most rabid Sandynista might spare a moment of pity for any library director who tried to make Berman follow a policy he disagreed with.
Worst of all, there are not enough of these pains in the neck to go around.
That's why library administrators need to read both this book and the biennial anthology, Alternative Library Literature. Years of fighting for funding can make library directors too realistic to remember all their library school ideals, or dream much beyond the limits of the status quo -- as Berlioz once said of another composer, "He knows everything. All he lacks is inexperience." Radical librarians are our profession's naifs, like Fraggle Rock's Traveling Matt who, watching people flying kites, believes he's seeing beautiful creatures struggling for freedom from their cruel human captors.
That doesn't mean I necessarily agree with, or even like all the essays in this collection, but then, that's not necessary. What matters is the internal dialogue they stir up in librarians' minds. Like so many billiard balls, the essays may not land where they were aimed, but they will crash into readers' minds and send them spinning off in new directions.
The first section of the book takes on the things library school didn't teach us. I enjoyed the dead-on list of truisms in Karen Elliott's "What I Really Learned in Library School" ("Libraries are never about politics." "Libraries are always about politics." "Taking yourself and your profession less than seriously is verboten." etc.) The most thoughtful and constructive article, I think, is Jess Nevins "What Library Schools Still Aren't Teaching Us," including teaching skills, public relations, outreach, and keeping up with the times.
The section on "Our Revolting Jobs" includes an article by Tracy Brennan on corporate management fads that have made their way into libraries -- "basically the process involves a superabundance of flip charts" and hours wasted discussing strategic focus, institutional vision, and mission statements. Daniel Tsang's "Taking a Stand" takes a historical view of "restriction of information or access to data in the service of the state..."
The "Our Revolting Issues" tackles problems like restrictions on freedom of speech in libraries, the image problem, the demotion of Sanford Berman, collecting material from alternative presses, and outreach. Bruce Jensen, the creator of SOL-PLUS (Spanish in our Libraries and Public Libraries Using Spanish, http://www.sol-plus.net/), has a fine essay on outreach to immigrant day laborers in California, which is notable in its practical applicability.
Notable because unfortunately, practicality is not the strong point of this collection. Some authors don't seem to realize that there might be real-world down-sides to their ideas, so they don't propose appropriate strategies for managing them. The trick of outreach, for instance, is to expand your user population without driving away the users you already have. If, for instance, you want to improve service to underserved populations by expanding your collection of materials on topics you know are controversial, it might be nice if at the same time you also presented a plan for explaining the decision to your board, local television reporters, or Dr. Laura. If you want to create a wide-ranging alternative literature collection, as Chris Dodge so eloquently argues for here, wouldn't it be useful to offer a selection policy to go with it, one that would stand up in court if, say, Matthew Hale of the World Church of the Creator sued you for not including his "alternative" publications?
There are some pretty entertaining pieces here as well -- I was especially fond of "Why Librarian: The Musical Is Doomed Before It Starts," and "Song of the Reference Librarian," and some of the cartoons and the haikus by Kathleen Kern ("Dear Melvil Dewey/I really don't fit in your/decimal system"). There are also a couple of pieces that seem to me like pointless whining about our underappreciated, underpaid work on behalf of ungrateful ignoramuses, but of course, who of us is in a position to cast stones about that? Not me.
I'm sorry that, perhaps out of undue modesty, the editors chose not to include their own work. Both of them have made significant contributions to librarianship, and at the very least, I would have liked to see Jessamyn West's "Five Technically Legal Signs for Your Library" -- http://www.librarian.net/technicality.html -- included here; it's amusing but it's also a perfectly practical way of protesting the PATRIOT ACT while informing your patrons about it.
So, my recommendations are as follows.
Buy the book: Good.
Read the book: Better.
Giftwrap it and send it to your library director: Best.
(Maybe anonymously, though.)
* * * * *
COOL QUOTE:
Libraries, if they are truly used, require the active participation of readers to inform themselves and others. A reader is the essential and equal partner to the library, which makes the current management trend of turning readers into customers such a menace. Customers merely consume and are powerless and dependent; readers read, an activity that is both productive and cooperative. And, with luck, the motivated library reader may also become the writer and so continue in the provision of free thought.
Piers Denton. "I Was a Teen-Age Anarcho-Terrorist," in Revolting Librarians Redux, McFarland, 2003.
* * *
You are welcome to copy and forward any of my own articles for noncommercial purposes (but not those by my guest writers) as long as you retain this copyright statement:
Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2003.
[Publishers may license the content for a reasonable fee.]
Please do NOT copy and post my articles to your own web sites, however. Instead, please copy a brief excerpt and link to my site for the remainder of the article.
