[da_chicken]

At least in the US, there have always been two places where freedom of expression is taken to its most extreme: libraries and universities.

Libraries tend to take the view that even bad and hateful ideas are worth preserving simply to record how bad they are. The idea should live on in its horrific badness, an example to all of the idiocy of humanity. In my experience, you'll never meet anyone as dedicated to privacy and openness as a librarian.

Universities take the view that every idea should be up for debate. It's the only way, the argument goes, to suss out the bad ideas and to harden good ideas against poor arguments. After all, if your idea is right then it should not be such a burden to examine it. The best ideas are those that survive the strictest scrutiny, so all ideas should be subject to it.

In both cases, the ideal should trump the social norms of avoiding certain topics due to social pressure or how offensive they are. Not studying history, medicine, or science due to societal norms is a questionable choice on the academic search for truth, and institutions of learning and knowledge should be dedicated to that search for truth.

Both these institutions, then, tend towards the philosophical ideal of free expression, not the legal reality of protected speech. When they say "freedom of expression," they're more interested in John Stuart Mill than the Constitution. Places of ideals judge themselves by ideals.

It's one reason people get annoyed when there are those stories about professors expressing bad ideas and asking students to think about them critically, and students respond by attacking the professor or asking for their removal. Bad ideas are great practice for learning critical thinking skills.

That said, I'm sure there are cases where the professors are sanctimonious jerks, too.

[throwaway8174]

I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but this is completely wrong and comically naïve. It is not representative of academic libraries at elite US universities. I work at an academic library at an Ivy League school, and am familiar enough with our peer institutions to provide some context. What you describe is a very rosy and idealistic view of libraries and especially librarians.

The truth is, academic libraries are extremely politicized institutions which censor information they view as ideologically inappropriate ALL THE TIME, both explicitly by culling books and implicitly through social coercion and other political maneuvers (setting up ideologically slanted committees which must approve new book purchases, etc). The examples are endless.

The idea that librarians are dedicated to “privacy” and “openness” — I’m still not sure what that means tbh — is absurd. Some are, but the vast majority of PL’s are highly ideological and rigid in their thinking, will absolutely not tolerate certain views on certain subjects (fairly mainstream views, btw), and depending on the political context, have varying commitments to anything resembling privacy or openness.

I’m happy to answer any questions or provide more detailed examples if anyone is interested. And this is specific to the Ivy League + schools in its orbit (Williams, Amherst Swarthmore, etc.)

[Mezzie]

Agreed.

The way the profession presents itself and the way librarians actually act are very at odds.

Academic librarians are in full on social justice mode, to the point where I wouldn't be comfortable writing the paper I wrote in 2015 on the ethics of archival neutrality today because my rejection of post-modernism archival theory just wouldn't be acceptable now. I've also been chased out of a library discussion group because in discussing the lack of POC who get MLISes, I mentioned we should also check the socio-economic status of the white students to determine if it was racism or classism keeping POC out of the programs (since many groups of POC are more likely to be poor, if poor people don't get MLISes, then yeah, you'll see fewer POC). This was unacceptable.

The public libraries are full of people with, honestly, a white savior complex who are convinced it's their job to let the poor, belabored proles have access to some crumbs of (properly selected) educational material or to act as heroes on behalf of the marginalized. You can find this out really quickly if you ask questions like, "What if someone needed INSERT BAD BOOK because they're studying the rhetoric of evil?" The idea that their public patrons might have equal (or even superior) intellectual needs to their own is completely anathema to them.

The profession is very credentialist and elitist. Very off-putting, personally, as someone from a complicated class background. I'd also use a throwaway, but I got MS as I finished my MLIS and so I'm useless to the profession and don't care.

[throwaway8174]

Agreed. I admire your candor and wish I could speak as freely as you, but like you said, this field is an ideological minefield where publicly voicing a dissenting opinion can cost you your job, or at the very least your social credibility.

The most difficult part is watching people you know and respect say things that you know they don’t believe to appease a group of people who are salivating for any opportunity to absolutely destroy them if they slip up.

You’re right about the class dynamics as well. I have coworkers who are descendants of multi-millionaire families yet have a palpable contempt for the working class while simultaneously claiming to speak in its interests.

It’s all rather dispiriting and frustrating.

[Mezzie]

Yeah, one of the few benefits to getting MS is like... what are they going to do, ruin my library career? My body did that when it decided to chew holes in my nervous system.

It's very hard, sometimes I kind of feel like I'm watching my former classmates be brainwashed. I try to only speak to people privately, unless they're being bold and expressing an unorthodox opinion, in which case I usually give public encouragement.

Oh man, I could go ON about the class dynamics. If you want the real dirt, talk to library staff. I was staff for over a decade before getting my MLIS.

[dogleash]

>post-modernism archival theory

I guess it makes sense such a thing would exist, but I wasn't expecting to hear that phrase.

Who chooses library science while wanting to be a bookburner? Seems like a recipe for absolutely miserable existence and life.

[Mezzie]

In context, post-modern archival theory makes sense. You just have to read it in context (that of the archival profession wrestling with their moral complicity in supporting some terrible governments in the mid 20th century) and contrast it with other views. Too many people don't do that.

It's more insidious than people going into the field hoping to censor. There's a large cohort that enters the field because they like helping people (as opposed to liking to organize information); those are the ones that end up here. They think they're helping or protecting people. They're also the loudest because the librarians working on things like open source repository tools prefer to bury their heads and ignore politics. Librarians are also really passive-aggressive and conflict-averse. It produces weird dynamics.

[da_chicken]

That may be your experience, but it does not reflect mine. My personal experience on the subject is working about a year at a modest municipal public library around 2005-2006 as their part-time IT administrator. It was around the time those librarians from New England sued the FBI over the PATRIOT Act, because that story broke while I was there. I'm basing my claim on my interactions on how those librarians tried to operate, and on how the other librarians at the nearby colleges seemed to operate. They were very concerned with privacy and openness exhibited by the Ranganathan laws of library science. Honestly, if you're confused by what I meant by privacy and openness I kind of question your claim. They had that "every book a reader/every reader a book" stuff up everywhere. Maybe there's been a generational shift.

The neighboring libraries they worked with were mostly community colleges or small regional universities, so I imagine they were likely not nearly as concerned with the prestige of their archives as an Ivy would be. My limited interactions with them didn't seem much different. It wouldn't surprise me if the more prestigious libraries were more politicized, however.

The point, however, was to discuss the ideals, and not the reality. I should think that was obvious given that MIT's commitment is similarly about ideals.

[Mezzie]

There's been a huge culture shift since 05-06. I started working in libraries in 2004, and what you're describing is more or less accurate until the mid-10s. That's when things started to shift. There's still a cohort that adheres to those ideals, but it's difficult to openly wade into contentious areas with that position unless one has the status to not be fired over it. A lot of it is that librarians, especially academic ones, are, as a group, very insecure because they often lack the credentials of other faculty, so they like to glom onto whatever the 'in' views in academia are in order to validate their presence in the academy.

Small, less prestigious libraries can go either way. On one hand, you're more likely to run into heterodox viewpoints, but on the other, a lot of progressives use those small libraries as career stepping stones and they're terrible about it. I still remember when the director of the community college library I worked in told me she was surprised I was a first-generation college graduate because I didn't seem like 'one of those people'. (Aka our students - this was in Flint, MI).

[Bjartr]

So a university library is more university than library in this regard.