I stumbled on two library-themed notes this week. One heralds the end of an era; the other is perhaps a sign of bad things to come.
Here's the good news:
S.M. Hutchens recently announced the end of TQM in libraries. This is particularly moving for me since TQM was just getting its foothold in libraries when I was in graduate school...in the early 1990s. I wrote essays on TQM for my library management class. I even use some of its principles in my book. Of course, I could care less about library management these days. I haven't worked around libraries or librarians in a long while. Still, I can't help but feel a bit wistful about TQM's demise.
I look forward to Mr. Hutchens' articles in Touchstone Magazine, he's an insightful librarian -- a dangerous combination. Librarians always trend toward homogeneity in temperament and political perspective. If you need to find an example of the lock-step thinking of the liberal and open-minded, you just have to attend a professional library conference. There you'll see legions of middle-aging women who are still waiting for the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and are very angry and cynical at the thought that they may die before it arrives. These are women who have CATS NOT KIDS bumper stickers on their cars and wear T- shirts sporting the gay and lesbian rainbow, even when they're neither.
Thinking outside the status quo is strictly prohibited among this crowd. Any deviation from the strict definition of liberal and open-minded are summarily squashed in an onslaught of huffs, sighs, and angry sneers. This is why it takes 20 years to initiate, train, and discard management fads that have long been discarded in the rest of the working world. Little thinking generates little innovation.
It's also the reason why this story doesn't surprise me. It appears that some of the liberal and open- minded folks at the Catholic Library Association are participating in a particularly pernicious form of pseudo-censorship:
In a New Oxford Note (Jul.-Aug. 2004, pp. 12-13), we noted that The Catholic Periodical and Literature Index (CPLI), published by the Catholic Library Association (CLA), has refused to index The Wanderer and had recently eliminated the NEW OXFORD REVIEW from its list of titles indexed.
We didn’t ask our readers to do anything about it, but one of our readers, who is a retired library director, took it upon himself to protest. He wrote to the “Chair” of the CPLI, saying: “As a library director who abided by Article Two of the American Library Association’s Bill of Rights (provision for all points of view)…, I am at a loss to understand why you dropped the New Oxford Review and did not add The Wanderer to the CPLI.” And he asked the “Chair” to send him a copy of the Guidelines for inclusion/exclusion for the CPLI.
Journal indexes are lists of published journals, and the articles published in those journals -- usually within a certain discipline, say art history or health and medicine. Articles are usually organized (or "indexed") by author, date, issue, and subject. You can search an index by subject, author, etc, and hopefully find the information you need.
In the bad old days, you would go to your public library and pick up the most current (green bound) issue of the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. If you were looking for information on a topical subject, this was the easiest way to access all of those periodicals. If a periodical wasn't in the Periodical Index, then people weren't aware of its content, and probably weren't aware of its existence. The same principle applies today to electronic indices and databases such as MedLine's Journals Database and OCLC/FirstSearch. If a journal isn't indexed, it's not getting used as much as it can. The internet has mitigated this weakness, but it certainly hasn't eliminated it, and journal editors are clearly aware of the advantages of being indexed. Librarians are aware of the advantages, too.
To reject a journal for inclusion in a popular index -- for ideological reasons, or any other -- is to prevent people from using it. The Chair of the Catholic Periodical and Literature Index -- currently one Mr. Cecil White -- is, in essence, banning the journal from broader circulation. This may not be outright censorship, it's close.
This is an abuse of a librarian's primary role as gatekeeper. You're supposed to trust a librarian to provide you with the best information, regardless of its ideology. This episode breaks down that trust. Once librarians go down this path; the profession is toast. Trust defines the profession. Without a bond of trust between a librarian and their seeker, there's no point in the seeker relying on a librarian to control any form of information. What's the point of going to experts, when they're a group of agenda-driven perverts and ideologues? People won't; librarians will become just as distrusted and loathed as other gatekeepers, like the mainstream media.
If you go to the American Libraries Association website, they'll have a link to their endless program, Banned Book Week.
What do they describe as a banned book?
A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. The positive message of Banned Books Week: Free People Read Freely is that due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful and most materials are retained in the school curriculum or library collection.
Hmmm.
Almost. Not quite, but...almost.
