Reading the recent extensive interview with Julian Assange in ”Der Spiegel” I cannot help remembering ”The Sad Story of Librarians’ Uncritical Attitude Toward Governmental Information” (see BTS blog July 24, 2015). And vice versa: Anders’ blog-entry inevitably makes me think about WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, analyze them, promote them and obtain more. WikiLeaks has more than 10 million documents and associated analyses now,
notes Assange in the middle of the Spiegel interview. Well, what do we find in this ”giant library” of WikiLeaks, if not the digital equivalent of megatonnes of governmental information (sometimes bundled with corporate files and emails)? In The Library, however, the efforts that WikiLeaks has put in promoting these documents, although widely noted by the media and in governmental circles, have so far not been crowned with success. No, the librarians have showed a hypercritical—actually a more than critical—attitude; they have ignored and rejected the governmental information from WikiLeaks. (In some cases they have even actively blocked access to it through their libraries; click here for an example.)
I admit having been a crude moralist toward my librarian colleagues for years. It all started back in 2001 when I wrote a book, “-Videst mulig informasjon-” (in Norwegian only) on the sad story of many librarians’ indifferent and uncritical attitude toward governmental information, which is of course very often the propaganda of the majority of the city council or the parliament and government.
My article ‘Information Services and the Independent Public Library’ is a summary in English of this book, published in Information for Social Change (ISC) No. 18, Winter 2003 (pdf). Page 24 ff.
Excerpt:
“… by presenting official [governmental] information as a genre of its own similar to fiction and non-fiction and without offering any contrary information on the same subject, librarians are in my opinion failing in their duty. An absence of conflicting views is harmful to social processes and leads to a more superficial democracy. … I also maintain that public libraries and their staff together with their national professional bodies reveal an attitude towards the authorities and their information activities which is uncritical and sometimes purely subservient. When loyalty is challenged there is a tendency towards self-censorship. Furthermore, any signs of tackling these problems have been ignored by central library forums”.
Mark Hudson with analogue resources in the reference area of Monroeville Public Library
Right at front when you open the website of Monroeville Public Library, Pennsylvania (no, not that Monroeville, fellow literature lovers), you are introduced to the library’s ‘Hot Topics’; i.e. sets of Web resources on local, national and international current issues. It was after my blog post two weeks ago, ‘How a Public Library Can Improve Public Participation and Democracy’, I was informed about ‘Hot Topics’ by Mark Hudson, Adult Services Librarian in Monroeville. He is one of the librarians responsible for Hot Topics.
Summer means reruns on all channels. On this blog I have the pleasure of reminding of and introducing to younger readers a much quoted (at least on this blog) article by Swedish author Sven Lindqvist from 1989: “How Public are Public Libraries”. The article is marked by being written about 5 years before the World Wide Web started showing its potential, however Lindqvist’s idea of the public library as the “research centre of the people”, launched in this article and in a number of speeches, stands firm:
“Libraries should become popular research centres which not only supply sources of information, but also produce the basic data one needs to express one’s opinions on different issues. As we know, political power in a society like ours largely depends on who controls the investigation processes. Today only the state, local authorities, enterprises and large organizations have these resources at their disposal. … municipal libraries should be given the resources to help environmental groups and other pressure groups, local associations, village communities and trade union branches to obtain the information they need, in about the same ways as the parliamentary information service helps the parliamentary parties with investigations in various questions”.
The article was first printed in Scandinavian Public Library Quarterly #3, 1989. I republish the article with permission of the author and of the journal (renamed Scandinavian Library Quarterly (SLQ) since 2012). Read the whole article below.
For our Scandinavian readers I even republish my interview with Sven Lindqvist in the Norwegian journal “Bok og bibliotek” #5-6, 1994 (pdf-file). See even at bokhylla.no (Norwegian IPs only).
Alt i 2001 var bibliotekkongressen i USA dominert av den fantastiske e-boka. Men “Var blev dom av?“
En låntagare går längs bibliotekshyllorna och finner boken hon vill läsa. Hon griper efter den, men den upplöser sig och försvinner mellan hennes fingrar. Nästa bok som hon vill läsa går inte att öppna. Helgalet? Kanske det, men så kan det bli i framtidens bibliotek.
The Library Takes Up the Case (LTC) – this is the name chosen for a new kind (however based on traditional library principles) of Web-based knowledge portal that libraries should start offering to their communities, for the purpose of meeting one of the major challenges of our time; the uncertain future of public participation and true democracy.
The abundance of information on the Web and in media conceals the fact that news and data are often insufficient, unbalanced and/or very complex and, often as a result, poorly or not at all organised. Dealing with such deficiencies has always been part of the library mission and libraries should be the first to take action.
One method may be the LTC – a most concise and user-friendly web portal. In short an LTC portal should contain links to major documents and facts in specific cases and debates.
