A recent
post in a mailing list within the profession that I subscribe to noted a book, Beyond Article 19: Libraries and Social and
Cultural Rights, that was published in 2010 [1]. The book is organized into
chapters that address various social and cultural issues as they manifest
within libraries and the profession, which often refer to the Declaration of
Human Rights. I was lucky enough to find that my university provides electronic
access to this book so that I could delve deeper.
Have you
ever actually read through the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights? It’s
a set of thirty articles outlining all rights that are considered “universal”
and are theoretically guaranteed to every individual (though this doesn’t
always happen in practice, as we see in many international news stories—like what’s
happening in Syria). For those of you that have not read the actual articles in
this document, anyone who has read our country’s Bill of Rights and the
Constitution would see a lot of similarities in the Declaration of Human Rights.
Most people would recognize Article 19 from its language alone, if not by its
name: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and
impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”
[2]. There are also some things that are spelled out very clearly there that we
might not think of, simply because we are lucky enough to live where a lot of
the social and cultural oppression does not happen. Some of these other
mentioned rights include having “freedom of movement” within your country of
residency [3], the right to marry with free and full consent [4], the right to “form
and to join trade unions” (yes that is specifically mentioned and puts an
interesting twist of some of the anti-union activity happening in various parts
of the US) [5], the right of “rest and leisure” [6], and the right to “freely…participate
in the cultural life of the community” [7].
One chapter
in particular, “Cultural Rights and Language Rights in Libraries” caught my eye
[8]. It connects the right to freely practice a culture with language
rights. If you think about it, language is vital to the social, religious,
creative, and other types of activity within a culture. It is how people within
the same culture not only communicates with each other but also shares and celebrates parts of the culture with each other, and how those outside the culture
can come to know and understand the various aspects of the culture. Say you
wanted to learn--really learn--about Italian culture. A logical place to start would be
by learning the language because that would allow you to better understand things
like the songs, stories, traditions, food, and society of that culture. So one
can argue that by guaranteeing the right to practice a culture, you also
guarantee the right to know and speak the language of that culture. You can
even go a step further by saying such guarantees also secure the right to equal
information access in that language.
And this is where libraries come in.
Libraries
have reincarnated themselves into different forms during different periods of
our recorded history. However, one underlying theme has always been libraries
as the source of information resources (which themselves have also taken many
forms). Nowadays, libraries and librarians seem to provide a much more varied
selection of services than during any other time of the libraries’ existence;
but the libraries’ role of information source is stronger than ever. So if they
are to successfully cater to those that rely on the services they provide, they
must become multicultural and multilingual especially in those areas of the
country and the world that are particularly diverse. And, as the author of the
above chapter notes, we must realize that with the extreme changes in
technology which continue to redefine and reconfirm our global and pluralistic society
that libraries are no longer only serving those within physical proximity. They
can just as easily field questions from individuals located hundreds or thousands
of miles away.
So what must
libraries and librarians do to ensure that cultural, language, and information
access rights are ensured? The author of this chapter suggests that it means including
resources of other cultures and organizing them in ways that are culturally
appropriate (thereby increasing accessibility). It means making libraries truly
multicultural not just in resources, but in programming and staff as well [9].
These are ideas that, while not new, are seemly gaining more attention and
momentum--as evidenced by the ALA weekly newsletter that is emailed to me, as
well as trends in topics I see on blogs, discussion boards including those on
LinkedIn groups, and conference offerings.
The final
lines of the above chapter are quite poignant: “A human rights approach [to
libraries] acknowledges that all cultures are valuable and all cultures
produce, often in their own languages, knowledge that contributes to our
understanding of humanity. Our collections need to restore people’s beliefs in
their names, in their language, in their environment, in their heritage of
struggle, in their unity, in their capacity, and ultimately in themselves”
[10]. I don’t know if libraries as a whole can yet be considered truly
multicultural based on this excerpt, but they are certainly moving in the right
direction. And to ensure cultural, language, and information rights, it is vitally important that they do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[1] Edwards,
J. B. & Edwards, S. P. (Eds.). (2010). Beyond
Article 19: Libraries and social and cultural rights. Duluth, MN: Library
Juice Press.
[2]
United Nations. "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights," Article 19. Retrieved July 3, 2012 from http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
[3] United Nations. Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13.
[4]
United Nations. Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16.
[5]
United Nations. Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23.
[6]
United Nations. Declaration of Human Rights, Article 24.
[7]
United Nations. Declaration of Human Rights, Article 27.
[8] Albarillo,
F. (2010). Cultural rights and language rights in libraries. In J. B. Edwards
& S. P. Edwards (Eds.), Beyond
Article 19: Libraries and social and cultural rights (pp. 85-111). Duluth,
MN: Library Juice Press.
[9] Albarillo,
F. Cultural rights and language rights in libraries, p. 104.
[10] Albarillo,
F. Cultural rights and language rights in libraries, p. 111.
