Library Politics and Agenda-Setting

I don’t want to alarm anyone…but there’s an elephant in the room.

It’s a very political elephant, which is a touchy subject in libraryland, especially in the UK. So I’m mentioning the elephant. I’m going to state, that I have…and I know it might come as a surprise…some views about libraries. I believe that librarians have a crucial role to play in effecting social change, in all sectors. I think they have a role as educators in critical information literacy. I think that public libraries are vital public spaces that need to see people as citizens, not consumers. I think libraries should be accessible. These are political positions. Lots of people, I’m sure, share these views, but there isn’t much substantive debate or discussion about these issues and the barriers we face, and I think in part that’s due to the political naïvety of the library and information profession.

This naïvety is, in many ways, responsible for the giant mess we’re in. Agendas have been set and we haven’t acknowledged how political in nature they are. Librarians and information professionals don’t control the discourse around library and information issues. We haven’t made it clear what values we’re espousing, because a lot of the time we aren’t savvy enough to know. We’ve courted private companies and governments whose values directly undermine the values of librarianship, like free expression of thought, privacy, and equity of access. Many aspects of LIS seek to establish and maintain certain boundaries and espouse certain political values without consciously or explicitly acknowledging that this is what they’re doing.

Playing the Game (Badly)

The political elephant is being ignored across the board, and this is causing serious problems. Attempts have been made to measure value and express it in ways that politicians and purse-holders will understand. Different methods, such as contingent valuation and cost benefit analysis are used to try to demonstrate that services make economic sense¹. Library school curricula are influenced by hegemonic forces. Professional bodies are driven by the need for paying members and are directed by the power of corporate influence from stakeholders. They are limited  by their status as charities and are therefore prevented from taking political positions, even when it’s in the interests of their members and the public they serve, to do so. Library services adopt corporate language to appeal to councils and adopt marketing techniques to mimic bookshops. It all seems fairly innocuous and after all, its aim is to protect and promote libraries, so it’s for a good cause.

But playing the game is dangerous. The way librarians refer to the value of the services they provide influences how we’re perceived by society. The values libraries promote in the way they are run and what they do can and do rub off on library users. Power dynamics and the way staff relate to users (and how we refer to people who use library services – customer? patron?) do influence people’s relationships with public services. The way councils value or fail to value public space does send a message to citizens about what’s worth paying taxes for and what’s not. The language used by local and national government to discuss public spending in the popular press does determine the set of beliefs and values that become the dominant thoughts being expressed by the media, by politicians and members of the public.

The Library Profession

For a long time, there’s been a fight to establish and maintain the professional status librarianship and information work. The promise of “prestige, higher salaries, and an elite employment niche” was a compelling reason for librarianship to fight for recognition as a profession², but professional bodies are now having a difficult time articulating their policy positions on the replacement of paid staff with volunteers (although the Society of Chief Librarians has now clearly stated that it accepts direct substitution of paid members of staff by volunteers³), and it seems like a lot of the problem stems from hazy distinctions between professional and paraprofessional staff and what counts as professional practice⁴. Chartership is very much centred around recruitment, becoming “more employable” and “transfer[ring] up through the ranks”⁵, without much thought about the politics and ethics of librarianship and information work or a clear sense of what it means to be a professional librarian. It feels as if it’s just another professional development box to tick post-qualification. This is a problem because it becomes difficult to articulate why paid, professional staff are a necessity and beneficial to democratic society, and doesn’t help to safeguard the public interest. Not all library workers are members of unions, and unions themselves are focusing on keeping libraries open, and the pay and conditions of workers. Few with loud voices are expressing the issues about the standard of service being lost and the ways this detrimentally affects our society.

Higher Education and Library School Curricula

Failure to engage with social and political issues is also evident in higher education and within departments providing Library and Information Science (LIS) education. Students find themselves under an “economic model of subservience”⁶, which prevents engagement with social issues:

“there is no future for young people, there is no time to talk about advancing social justice, addressing social problems, promoting critical thinking, cultivating social responsibility, or engaging non-commodified values that might challenge the neoliberal world view.”

Defining the library and information discipline as scientific is positivistic and confers non-political and value-free status upon it, which is both impossible and counter-productive. The LIS curriculum tends to shy away from social issues, leaving graduates ignorant about key political issues. Christine Pawley writes:

“…the deepening division of society between information haves and have-nots is widely discussed in the general press. Does the LIS curriculum participate in this debate, or does it rather contribute to the information apparatus’s aim of avoiding social criticism?

Where are the courses on information politics? On the production and distribution of information? On the ownership of information? On the stratification of information? Such courses do exist in some schools, but, for the most part, curricular consideration of these questions lurks in what are sometimes stigmatized as “airhead” or “philosophical” (that is, nontechnical) areas: courses in LIS foundations service to or aimed at low-status populations such as children or the elderly or taught from a feminist or multicultural perspective.

From a class perspective, this failure of LIS education to confront societal questions is itself a sign of the power of the dominant class to exercise hegemony. Traditionally, LIS studies both the institution of libraries and the broad phenomenon of information largely through pluralist and managerial lenses as questions of service delivery, technical efficiency, and managerial effectiveness. One result is a politically naive profession.” ⁶

Library Conferences and Events

Conferences and events organised by professional organisations and other groups often instil certain values in those who attend them, especially if they don’t think critically about their experiences and the information they’re exposed to, and aren’t conscious of the impact and influence aspects of the middle-class professional agenda:

“For example, when professional people attend conferences and publish scholarly papers, they are taking part in this ongoing process of establishing and maintaining the boundaries of middle-class conduct and values.” ⁷

Events such as LibraryCamp say that they aim to provide a “politically neutral arena for debate”⁸, but take inevitably political stances on censorship and make political choices about corporate sponsors, who have their own agendas when it comes to influencing policies and services⁹. It’s simply contradictory to claim to be non-political but explicitly state that an event aims to save libraries and return them to mass public use. Access to and use of public libraries is political. Wanting to keep them is political. Making a conscious effort to make the event accessible for people with disabilities is a political choice. These aims are valuable, and it’s more than just important, it’s imperative, that the inherent, unavoidable, political values being promoted are acknowledged. These are good things and we shouldn’t be scared to talk about them. We need a vocabulary to discuss the substantive issues, through the language of public discourse¹⁰. We don’t currently have it and we desperately need to develop it.

Doing this, however, makes it difficult to be seen as legitimate by those in power – you immediately face being branded as a troublemaker, a tub-thumper, or at the very least, someone who challenges the status quo and oughtn’t be listened to. It places some kind of social responsibility on you as an individual to seek to effect change, and think about the impact of the decisions you make and the messages you send through the actions you take and the things you say, and that’s hard work. Although sold as an arena to facilitate debate, it’s questionable how authentic that debate can be when most of the attendees all know each other on twitter, and the majority of them are qualified or soon to be qualified, and female. Even if there was a more mixed group of attendees, there’s the spiral of silence to contend with¹¹, especially when there’s the strong chance that corporate sponsors (who as far as I’m concerned have had their thoughts heard quite enough, through the various avenues they already have open to them, thanks) will be running sessions, immediately creating an environment where discussion becomes led, rather than shared, by the members who have more experience in selling and influencing. When you start thinking about all that, it stops being a nice day out with friends and tea and cake. Which is all it’s meant to be, I’m sure, and that’s fine in and of itself. I do think events like this have some value, and I respect anyone who’s gone to the hard work of organising something. I don’t want to be a cake-smashing party pooper.

But, we need to be conscious of the language we use and the messages we send to attendees, the library profession, and the outside world. I haven’t got a shovel big enough to clear up the mess that our elephant’s making. I don’t have a solution to get people to acknowledge it’s there or work out how to deal with it. I just know that we have to acknowledge it, and not pretend it isn’t there and that isn’t causing an almighty great stink.

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1) Walker, C., Halpin, E., Rankin, C., and Chapman, E. (2011) “Measuring the Value of Public Libraries: The fallacy of footfall and issues as measures of the value of Public Libraries - Summary Report”. Available from: 
http://www.shef.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.199926!/file/Measuringthevalueofpubliclibraries.pdf

2) O’Connor, L. (2009) “Information literacy as professional legitimation: The quest for professional jurisdiction”. Library Review, 58 (4), pp.272-289. Available from: <
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/00242530910952828
>

3) 
http://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/2012/08/the-scl-spells-it-out.html

4) Pawley, C. (1998) “Hegemony’s Handmaid? The Library and Information Studies Curriculum from a Class Perspective”. The Library Quarterly, 68 (2), pp.123-144. Available from: 
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4309200

5) 
http://www.cilip.org.uk/jobs-careers/qualifications/accreditation/pages/default.aspx

6) Giroux, H. (2011) “The Politics of Ignorance: Casino Capitalism and Higher Education”. Counterpunch. Available at: 
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/31/casino-capitalism-and-higher-education/

7) Pawley, C. (1998) p.132

8) Pawley, C. (1998) p.129

9) 
http://libcamp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-co-operative-bank-grant-application.html

10) 
http://www.libcamp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/librarycamp-session-proposal-15.html

11) Giroux, H. (2011)

11) 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence

Images:

The elephant in the room CC licensed John Mallon Iphoneography on Flickr
Lost CC licensed by Robert S. Donovan on Flickr
Cake Aftermath CC licensed by jasonsisk on Flickr

The Three Rs: Reading, wRiting and Rioting

I wanted to throw a few thoughts together about the role of libraries and librarians during times of civil unrest. It’s not fully formulated and I’m certainly not suggesting that if you chuck a few library buildings into places where people are looting and burning, that suddenly you’ve solved all of society’s problems, but I do think that libraries and librarians have a role to play as part of a much bigger picture. It’s a bit meandery, but here are some thoughts.

“The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.” Audre Lorde

It’s well-documented (and a bit of a no-brainer) that people who can read well are far more likely to be able to get out of cycles of disadvantage, and that good libraries help people to read well. As well as that fundamental role of access to reading and learning resources and support though, librarians and libraries have an important role to play in enabling people to develop literacy skills that go beyond the ability to read well.

Library-related readers will probably be familiar with the concept of information literacy: “knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner”. Transliteracy might be a slightly less familiar term, and is “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks”, and I think that the events of the past few days are an example of how important it is for people to be able to tell the difference between reliable and unreliable sources of information. There’s a lot of information about libraries and transliteracy over here.

There’s a real problem with levels of transliteracy in the UK and I think it’s a major cause of problems like people making snap judgements about the reasons for the rioting, the kind of people involved and what should be done with them (a lot of people are all for water cannons and rubber bullets because they see them as harmless, for example, but don’t seem to have looked into the damage and fatalities they can cause). There are problems with people believing everything the media tells them, and spewing forth opinions they haven’t really thought about and don’t understand the nuances of. Education is an important part of this, but it’s got to be done well, consciously and neutrally. A lot of it, I think, needs to come about through self-education, but that involves having a desire to learn in the first place and knowing where and how to get hold of reliable sources of information. Citizenship education is under threat, democratic engagement is low and people feel far less a part of the society and communities in which they live than they used to. They don’t know how to get involved in the democratic process or why it’s even important for them to do so. They don’t know how to articulate the opinions they have about the world around them. Libraries can help with that.

Twitter has been a major source of information and misinformation about the riots – the NewT Bham Group wrote about it in this blog post and said that it’s clear “we need to teach our young people how to evaluate information and how to use it appropriately in this modern age (the tweets imply that many just believe, repeat and then spread anything they read).” I saw a blog post (and now can’t find it, sorry!) that was talking about how twitter would benefit from some truth-arbiters, as it were, people you could rely on to help distinguish between fact and rumour during events such as riots and protests. I think library and info pros would be good people do this – or at the very least to help people develop the skills to do it themselves. I’ve seen a few librarians on twitter mention this, and some have even gone as far as to point out that it’s very unhelpful to tweet about things if you don’t definitely know they’re true.

Social media has been blamed for being a cause of the riots, which is, frankly, idiotic. Sterling Prentice says a similar thing over on Drop the Reference Bomb:

“Sure, you can blame Facebook or Blackberry, but limiting these services will hardly stop the effect. Egypt is a good example of how this doesn’t work. Scapegoating is often used a quick fix for deeply seeded social problems, but it is not necessarily the best long-term response to over-boiling social issues.”

Social media and mobile devices aren’t going away – so it’s really important for people to know how to a) use them effectively and b) not see them as some kind of force for evil, and in turn demonise them. Librarians can help with that.

An interesting aside: here and here are a couple of posts about the relationship between deprivation and the riots using google fusion tables and deprivation indices data. The government is having a drive to make its data more open and accessible, but not that many people know how to manipulate it into a meaningful form. Open data alone is not enough to make a difference. There’s a problem with the digital divide and a potential problem with a data divide – and librarians can help with that, too.

The problem is…libraries are under threat. School libraries are being closed, and not built at all in new schools. Between 400 and 600 public libraries in the UK will close over the next couple of years (not to mention the cuts to professional/paid/qualified staff who can offer support that volunteers can’t). Areas will be stripped of their assets and become more deprived. People will have less access to information and education resources. People will find it harder to apply for jobs because they don’t have computers at home and their library’s closed, or now charges a membership fee or for use of the internet, or they don’t like going in there because it’s in the police station or church hall. The cycle will continue.

“You can’t just lecture the poor that they shouldn’t riot or go to extremes. You have to make the means of legal redress available.” Harold H. Greene

I’ve been meaning for a while to write a blog post about cuts to legal aid and the impact it’s likely to have on legal challenges launched by people trying to stop cuts to library services. It’s fairly simple – it’ll mean that it’s harder to get legal aid, fewer cases will go to court because a two day judicial review costs about £30,000 and people in general don’t tend to have that kind of money lying around, let alone people in the deprived areas that are being particularly hard-hit by library cuts; their libraries are more likely to close than anywhere else, because they don’t have the kind of communities and people in them who are able to set up or sustain a volunteer-run library system. Of course legal aid cuts won’t just harm those trying to save libraries, it will harm all kinds of people in need of access to legal support, including for employment cases.

It all just seems a bit too deliberate.

Talk at the West Yorkshire Playhouse

Today I spoke at Windows on the World: Keeping Them Open – The prospects for public service broadcasting, libraries and arts. Below is the script which I tried to stick to! I had 10-15 minutes to speak and an awful lot to cram in, so I followed the advice of the wise daveyp and aimed for about 20 points that got a minute or two each. Hopefully I was factually accurate and vaguely informative…

Don’t Be Quiet Please

I was interviewed by Red Pepper Magazine a couple of months ago, and the article’s now available here.

I’m really happy about the way they’ve covered a wide range of the different services available through public libraries, because a lot of the reporting around it recently has continued to peddle the old “libraries are just about books” line, which is fine to an extent, but isn’t accurate and is pretty simplistic and reductive.

Anyhow, here’s the bit that’s got me in it

According to Lauren Smith, passionate Doncaster librarian and member of the Save Doncaster Libraries campaign group, ‘Libraries are more relevant and innovative than ever before. Especially in times of recession, libraries can be like sanctuaries where people can come and access information for free.’ Lauren emphasises that despite vast amounts of information being available online, there are materials such as historical documents and reference books that are only available at libraries. Indeed, a recent innovation in libraries is to have expensive software and subscription databases available free to members, including online databases such as family genealogy, NewsUK, and the Oxford/Grove online art and music encyclopedias.

Another innovation in libraries is their intention to reach out to those who can’t get to a library or don’t have the time. ‘Soon it may well be possible for members to download e-books from the library website. It will also be possible to download audiobooks straight to your iPod,’ says Lauren.

The advent of self-checkout points is a development that has freed librarians to spend more time engaging with the public and assisting with in-depth research. But this role is forgotten as councils look to the technology as an excuse to get rid of librarians altogether.

‘It is a worry that professional librarians are being phased out,’ says Lauren. ‘It is essential that libraries are run by qualified staff with the right ethical grounding to provide a wide and balanced variety of information to the public. If libraries are run solely by volunteers, or by private companies, the information provided and the training courses offered may become skewed and biased.’

I really wish more reporters would mention the social value of libraries and the importance of equity of access,  as well as the wide variety of information and leisure resources available, all of which are totally relevant and valid in a public library service. It was lovely to see how much effort had been put into this piece, and I’m really grateful to Donald for listening so intently as I rambled down the phone to him about all the things that libraries do and why it’s vital they do them properly.