[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).