I’m a librarian and agree. Taxpayer-funded libraries should maintain political neutrality. I don’t know about the librarian in this case, but that’s a general principle I’ll support.
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*sighs
Again:
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I’m not, but my experience of Evanston was largely confined to the northern part immediately surrounding Northwestern, which is also where the library is located. Not a lot ever distinguished that area in my mind from the rest of the North Shore suburbs, where (for example) local citizens proudly and openly campaign against affordable housing initiatives because a permanent presence of certain class (and, not coincidentally, race) populations would reduce property values.
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[quote=“hawkeward, post:44, topic:102095”]
I’m not, but my experience of Evanston was largely confined to the northern part immediately surrounding Northwestern,[/quote]
Then you are not well informed. Evanston - practically alone among the North Shore suburbs - has been comfortably integrated for well over half a century, with relatively good relations among all its citizens even when racists in Deerfield were shooting at housing developers in 1959 to resist integration, and even when the suburbs north of Evanston except for Highland Park were closed to any non-WASP (eg, to Jews).
It also has stretches of extreme wealth, especially near the lake, where it looks quite a lot like Wilmette and Kenilworth.
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Can you define “political neutrality”? For example, if some group complained about a celebration of a particular author held at a library, such as say WEB Dubois or Alice Walker, demanding that the library eliminate it, because they felt the authors were “anti-white”, is that something that SHOULD be eliminated, in the name of “neutrality”? Or if this group demanded instead that we celebrate books by obvious white supremacists to “counterbalance” the celebration of Dubois? At what point does neutrality become silencing?
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I agree, in theory, with both of the librarians who have commented here. Neutrality is a core value of librarians; see the Library Bill of Rights (Library Bill of Rights | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues).
For example, I am deeply involved in a crowd-funding effort called Reveal Digital (http://revealdigital.com/) to make publicly accessible primary resources that are long in the public domain, including a new collection of KKK and other hate group newspapers published in the 1920s. I would like to think we are bound by professional values to collect all sorts of materials, regardless of our political beliefs.
However, there is a difference between collecting materials and making them widely available and standing idly by while issues of prejudice in employment and access continue to exist. I’ll offer another personal example. Mr. Jilly was a public library director in the Mississippi Delta (Sunflower County, to be exact) in the late 1990s. There was a “pass policy” in place for all school children that, in essence, restricted access for most African-American children in a county that was and is almost 80% black. He fought diligently with the all-white board and county board of supervisors to change this policy. Was that political? Maybe. Did it adhere to the Library Bill of Rights? Absolutely.
We librarians as a profession have issues with diversity. We are between 80-90% female (for any number of reasons, see nurses and teachers), and the numbers of African-Americans among our midst is dismal. That this woman has taken to social media may not adhere to our notions what is or is not acceptable employee behavior.
I still applaud her. To have truly diverse collections, one must have truly diverse collection development librarians. If libraries are indeed the last bastion of institutions fighting for information to be freely available, then we need to recognize our own failures in diversity.
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Although I’ve read the article and thread, every time I see the title I automatically misread it as “suburban Chicago library sets fire to…”.
It’d be nice if, just once, an organisation responded to staff dissent on social media by fixing the problem instead of persecuting the whistleblower. Given the clearly established hostility of management, do we think there was any chance of this board seriously tackling these issues if the librarian had stuck to official channels?
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That’s covered by the law of defamation in this country, you didn’t read my post.
Libraries should present multiple sides of any controversy that it wishes to address. If it has an event on Dubois, then it could balance it by showing criticism of him or also delivering a presentation on someone ideologically opposite of him.
Please elaborate on the “pass policy” that Mr. Jilly witnessed. I’d like to hear more.
I agree that we have a diversity problem in American librarianship. The profession, especially the ALA, leans hard in one political direction. As individual librarians, we can advocate for diversity by collecting materials from a wide variety of viewpoints and striving for collection equity that embraces a range of experiences. For example, if we buy a book that advocates for gun control, we should also buy a book that advocates for gun rights.
So the Holocaust deniers get a display?
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so if the library gets a book about someone making a solo circumnavigation of the globe in a sailboat the library should also get a book from the flat earth society?
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Well if they put it in the comedy section then it would be okay…
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Forget libraries: art museums have been guilty of one-sided exhibits for years. They’ll do a retrospective of one artist’s works, and never present the opposing viewpoint that art is worthless, or at least modern art, or art made with the wrong materials, or with naked bodies, etc.
Clearly we need equal time for those presentations in order to be fair. Why don’t we have opposing shows like the Degenerative Art Exhibition anymore?
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I know you’re being facetious, but that would actually be interesting. An entire exhibit of art that portrays the human body as shameful, or anything not solely designed for function as worthless. This would actually make a point about the importance of beauty though…
What about a holding cell with sportsball and beer, for all the blue collar guys dragged there by their annoying girlfriends and pretentious kids? That is more accurately anti art. If you find yourself in that room, it’s because you care little about art and even less about people who appreciate art.
The same can be said about fake evenhandedness. You can create a safe space for shitty people, but first you have to acknowledge that it is exactly that.
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I can easily understand now why liberals are so worried about combover boy. I mean, when you consider the subliminal powers he was exerting years before running for president -
??
Jibberish.
What are you banging on about?
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Per the article I cited, there was opposition to Williams going back for years. And only very recently did the library board try to cover that up.
I’m suggesting that this does not fit the narrative of “racism coming out in the open now that Orange Cheeto Can’t Read King of Hate Russian Mole Hitler is president”.
Howard Roark here is just interested in normalising Il Douche as just another manifestation of bad ol’ government. His “logic” assumes that a President who actively discourages racism and one who actively stokes its fires are the same because societal racism exists in both cases. It’s the usual tiresome and easily debunked Libertarian false equivalency schtick.
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[quote=“Enkita, post:49, topic:102095”]
That’s covered by the law of defamation in this country[/quote]
No, the typical contractual obligation is in addition to the basic law that would apply to anyone, employee or otherwise.
Unhelpful. If that’s your approach, I’m not playing.
