Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility in American Librarianship, 1967-1974 [Paperback]

Toni Samek (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0786409169 | ISBN-13: 978-0786409167 | Publication Date: January 2001

Between 1967 and 1974, a number of librarians came together to push for change in the American Library Association. They soon prompted a majority of the profession to examine their role in the dissemination and preservation of culture and to ask basic questions about the terrain that the profession defends. A particular concern was the limitations to intellectual freedom (if any) that might arise in the pursuit of other perhaps equally worthy goals. The questions raised by this advocacy group were based on a relatively new concept of librarianly social responsibility that was partly an outgrowth of the civil rights and antiwar agitation of the period and partly a continuation of the proud traditions of the alternative press movement in the United States. The resulting dissension and turmoil exposed an inherent discrepancy not only between the rhetoric of ideals within the profession and the reality of practice but between librarians as agents of change-librarians' having a social agenda-and professional "neutrality" or the provision of information for all sides without taking sides. These conflicts have never been resolved. The reader will find in this book a fully researched presentation of the years of ferment and political infighting that brought the issues into such sharp focus.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The rise and absorption (activists would say "co-optation") of the social responsibility movement in U.S. librarianship is told here in readable prose and meticulous detail. Library educator Samek (SLIS, Univ. of Alberta) has done us a great service with the fullest account ever of the key events in the diffuse movement that centered in the American Library Association's (ALA) dissident Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT), a small group that still struggles to reform the huge organization. Samek's main focus is on the never-ending debate between intellectual freedom (IF) purists under banners raised by David Berninghausen (director of the now defunct University of Minnesota library school) and the Sixties rebels of SRRT. The IF supporters, clustered around Judith Krug and ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, saw the SRRT activists as threats to ALA neutrality on political issues and thus to traditional library neutrality. Samek herself writes with the historian's objectivity, but her choice of Sanford Berman to write the excellent foreword urging a continued struggle to achieve real neutrality by ending library biases in favor of "property, wealth, bigness, mainstream culture, and established authority" and the book's dedication to Jackie Eubanks, a true SRRT radical of the period, hint that she might stand with the good guys. After providing exceptional detail from primary and secondary sources, Samek concludes that the old association was able not only to accommodate these rebels in its midst but to co-opt most of them into its massive structure and activities. Her research, she writes, suggests "that while the library was positioned in the 1960s to play a role in social change, the conservative tradition and structure of the institution prevented it from realizing such a transformation." A sad ending but a very important contribution to the modern history of the library movement in the United States. John Berry, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Reviews 1960s activism and its impact on the American Library Association and librarianship" -- -American Libraries

"Truly exposes the soft underbelly of our profession during the so-called 'Revolutionary Sixties.' Highly recommend[ed]" -- -Library Juice

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 179 pages
• Publisher: Mcfarland & Co Inc Pub (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786409169
• ISBN-13: 978-0786409167
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,109,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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