Page 28 - BCALA Spring 2018

28 | BCALA NEWS | Volume 45, Issue 2
Can libraries be neutral?
Should they strive to be neutral?
By Em Claire Knowles, Simmons University
(Editor’s note: this is one of three essays submitted to BCALA News from Black LIS professionals who participated in the 2018 ALA Midwinter President’s Program on library neutrality)
The short answer is yes. The long answer: It’s complicated.
As someone who has been a library professional for 40 years, and who has served for 10 years as a commissioner of libraries in my state and who now serves as vice president of the Freedom to Read Foundation, I am strongly committed to the core value of intellectual freedom. I further believe that we can achieve, or aspire to achieve intellectual freedom only by beginning with a commitment to neutrality.
Too often “neutrality” is presented as if it is what occurs when we don’t do or think anything. It’s called an
intermediate state or condition,
not clearly one thing or another,
a middle ground where we don’t take a side; where we have an absence of decided views, feeling, or expression. Synonyms for neutrality are indifference; impartiality, dispassionateness.
I would suggest quite the opposite. Neutrality is a process to which libraries and librarians must actively commit, a goal that must be continually sought, an aspiration that must be regularly renewed
and reimagined so as to remain relevant to the institution and to the community it serves. There is nothing, to my mind, dispassionate about neutrality.
Heather Douglas, an authority in shaping policy on issues of great moral and cultural significance, illustrates my point about active neutrality. She argues against
a passive version of neutrality because it is not adequate to meet the challenges of, for example, racist or sexist speech. She urges us instead to take a “balanced”
position with respect to a spectrum of values. We - and I include ALA and libraries in that “we” - can establish a set of core values and implement respect for those values in such a way that we ensure respect for all members of our constituencies.
To be specific, we must promote the importance of reading and learning to keep our residents informed;
we must respect people’s cultural views and understanding, but we must also help users to explore new perspectives;
we must be open to reasonable accommodations to concerned patronage, and be prepared for any controversy created by those accommodations; and
lastly, we must use all the available PR and marketing efforts to get our message out to the widest audience and to emphasize the positive role libraries and librarians play in a civil society.
Another thought leader in information literacy, Laura