Questioning Library Neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian, Summaries of Online Journalism

Download Questioning Library Neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian and more Summaries Online Journalism in PDF only on Docsity! Page 74 Progressive Librarian #32 Questioning Library Neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian, edited by Alison Lewis. Duluth MN: Library Juice, 2008. ISBN: 978-0- 9778617-7-4 Reviewed by by Toni Samek What constitutes library work? What is a library issue? What is a non- library issue? These are the enduring dilemmas at the heart of Questioning Library Neutrality, a stylishly muted grey-and-black paperback eco- printed in the United States on acid-free paper from publisher Library Juice. While you can read this work in one sitting, standing or stationary cycling, the intellectual endeavour should not stop there. One should keep this pocketbook kicking around for future reference, because the gut questions raised still need further exploration. The 11 varied essays were originally published in Progressive Librarian (the journal of the Progressive Librarians Guild) and range from three to 33 pages in length. They are presented in the chronological order of their original publication, beginning in 1991. Thus the content flow does not reflect the natural progression of the original events. Rather this book takes its readers, a bit abruptly, in and out of both rhetorical and activist perspectives offered up by the eclectic contributors (Jack Andersen, John J. Doherty, Shiraz Durrani, Joseph Good, Sandy Iverson, Robert Jensen, Steven Joyce, Peter McDonald, Mark C. Rosenzweig, Elizabeth Smallwood, and Ann Sparanese) who penned their words in Canada, Denmark, UK, USA, and African roots perspective. Some of the essays hold up over time better than others. Rosenzweig’s essay is the shortest and arguably the most potent. His prose is elegant. His phrasings are punchy. Smallwood and Durrani also do a great service with their unstuffy the professional is political message, which they grounded in a journey from Kenya to Britain. And we owe a lot to Iverson for coining the late 1990s phrasing librarianship and resistance, which best translates the neutrality debate into terms of present-day analysis. Other discussions on corporatism, objectivity, LGBTQ, alternative press, journalism and media studies, information criticism, self-reflection (or lack thereof) in LIS discourse, and moral relativism are deep and informative, but perhaps less fresh in 21st century context. Critical librarianship has come into its own; it is no longer nigh on impossible or unusual to encounter LIS writings that overtly acknowledge the political realties of library and information work. Berninghausen is no longer with us, but many of his 1973 Library Journal challengers remain on the scene (e.g., E.J. Josey, Jane Robbins, Patricia Schuman, and Robert Wedgeworth). What do they think now? I invite Library Juice to compile a companion volume to this book – an epilogue of views from that historic front. I would welcome it in the LIS classroom as well as my living room. This 149-page eighteen-dollar steal closes with a brief paragraph about each contributor, but no index. I would like to see an index created, not so much because this book needs one. Rather, taxonomies of neutrality makes for meaningful library and information work. That said, I am fully