What Tangled Webs We Weave

I know that I'm not the only one who's been following Edwin Meller Press lately. I've seen reports and updates on its recent actions in the weekly ALA Direct email newsletters. For those of you who have not been following this series of events as closely, here's a bit of background (with lots of other articles included that you can follow up with and read for yourself).

It all started when a librarian, Dale Askey, criticized Edwin Meller Press for the quality of its publications on a blog post written in 2010. Now, for those of you not in the profession, it is considered part of a librarian's job to examine materials for a library collection and judge whether or not the item is suitable in both content and form. Poorly-bound books would likely be returned to the publisher that sent them because they would not be able to have a long shelf life, requiring the library to repurchase the title if it wanted to keep the title in the collection. Likewise, an item of poor scholarship quality may be returned or passed over because it would not as adequately discuss/explore a topic as other items addressing the same topic would; librarians would try to choose the titles of highest quality to ensure that library funds are spent smartly. And to get this information about items prior to making a purchase, librarians turn to reviews--which are written by publishers, book/item reviewers, and even other librarians. Libraries can't afford to waste money, so librarians will utilize many sources to help them make educated guesses about the value of an item for their collection. So back to Dale Askey. He was providing his own opinion about the materials from Edwin Meller on the blog; the post is no longer on the actual blog, but is available through web archiving (yay for web archiving!). And it seems that Edwin Meller took exception to his criticism. Initially two lawsuits were filed, one against Askey and one against Askey and McMaster University (where he works); since the lawsuits were originally filed, the one against both Askey and McMaster has been dropped, but the one against Askey alone still stands.

And so begins the back-and-forth between Edwin Meller and librarians. Currently, the publisher has stepped up its game and is suing another librarian. Rick Anderson is now the target of a second lawsuit because of his criticisms regarding Edwin Meller and the actions taken against Askey. Anderson's criticisms also took form in a blog; both posts regarding Edwin Meller have been archived (since they were taken down too) and can be seen here and here. The whole situation has gained a lot of attention in the profession and in higher education, and has spawned both petitions to tell Edwin Meller to lay off the lawsuits and a parody Twitter account. I know the saying goes that there is no such thing as bad press, but I can't imagine that Edwin Meller will be able to come out ahead in this.

Since I have no experience with this particular publisher, I have no way to personally attest to the accuracy of Dale Askey's claims. My reason for bringing up this series of events is to illustrate how easily something that we take for granted in a "free" country--being able to criticize a business, a person, a government--can be challenged. Think about all of the websites out there that are solely used to rate or review goods or services: Angie's List, Yelp, even sites that allow customer reviews like Amazon. If we are not allowed to be critical about a product or service, how are we going to be able to tell the wheat from the chaff? And let's be realistic: there is a lot of chaff out there. It's not really that big of a stretch to see that challenging the right of a librarian to criticize the quality of an item is challenging the right to criticize anything. At the core, it's an act of censorship.

I can't divine what Edwin Meller's true motives are and what they hope to gain from these lawsuits, but like some other bloggers I've read I think these lawsuits will cause more damage to the publisher than good.

The Importance of Multicultural Libraries

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.

Web Creator Pro?

I feel like I just accomplished a big milestone. For my web development class, I designed a website intended to be the "new look" for a librarian organization (the Progressive Librarians Guild) I've been doing some basic web work for since the beginning of 2011. My previous assistance with their site was nothing more than what someone with a good eye for detail could learn on their own if they had the inclination. In other words, really basic stuff (HTML code for those in the know). But my web development class of course greatly strengthened my skill, and I know how to do a lot more: HTML4 and 5, XHTML, CSS3, and a little XML, PHP, and JavaScript. My toolbox has grown exponentially.

My instructor starting us thinking about our course projects early. I initially thought of something like a pathfinder (a resource providing information on a topic), but I really wasn't enthusiastic about this idea. To me, it just seemed like a ho-hum topic that would do nothing more than fulfill the minimum of the project assignments. Then one morning while I was getting ready for work, I had an epiphany: I could make a website for the PLG. It would be perfect; I would have the ability to improve the look of their site (the old site needed a bit of a make-over), clean up the code, and do something that would be personally meaningful--and get a grade for it.

Long story short, I did have to tweak the style slightly to meet the tastes of the organization's coordinating committee, as well as adjust some of the content, but the response has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic and they want to make me an honorary member. That gesture alone made the whole project worth it. To have something I did be useful (and I get to see it be useful immediately), and to be able to contribute at this level really made my day yesterday. I feel honored and privileged to have had this project so well received. We're still nailing down some of the details, tucking in here, adjusting a bit there, but it is close to being finished and going live. And when it does, perhaps I'll post a link to the new page so you can see it.

I already have another project lined up: upgrading and redoing the website for the library I work at. That will be my summer project, and one I hope to have completely done by the time I start my next semester again in the fall.

So once the new PLG site is up, does that mean I've turned pro?