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Below are some thoughts from Dr. Sam Trosow about last Wednesday’s London Public Library Board meeting. What he says about the “customer-service” approach to librarianship is particularly telling, I think, and the use of the associated terminology reveals a frightening lack of understanding about what librarians *do*. Niamh A. McGuigan wrote an excellent thesis entitled “A Critique of the Student as Customer Metaphor in Higher Education and Academic Libraries” which delves into this very issue. Trosow has addressed this issue himself in an article called “Terminology is Important” [Public Libraries v. 43 no. 2 (March/April 2004) p. 86-7]. John Buschman also writes well about the customer vs. patron debate in Dismantling the Public Sphere: Situating and Sustaining Librarianship in the Age of the New Public Philosophy (Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2003). Should all be required reading for first-year library school students (and library board members)!

Dr. Alvin Schrader, now CLA President, is one of the world’s most eloquent supporters of intellectual freedom and he has written extensively on the topic of Internet filters in public libraries and the rights of children to access the online world. At the 1999 IFLA Conference in Bangkok, he gave a speech entitled “Internet Filters: Library Access Issues in a Cyberspace World” in which he said (on page 19) that “Outsourcing moral authority to faceless and anonymous Internet guardians is no alternative to family values and family responsibility, librarian and teacher guidance, and individual critical awareness. Technology is not an alternative to private or social conscience: filtered ignorance is still ignorance.”

-SIO

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As I was making my presentation to the Board, and then as Roma Harris was making her presentation, it seemed very clear to me that many of the Board members were attentively listening and seemed to be hearing these types of arguments presented for the first time. They seemed very concerned about what we were saying, they asked some good questions, and there was at least the beginning of a thoughtful discussion, at least until the Board chair cut it off.

One of the Board members (Nancy Branscombe who is also the city councilor representing the area around the university) tried to make a motion to rescind the policy pending further study and public feedback. As the Free Press article reports, the councilor was ruled out of order because proper notice of motion wasn’t given. It was then put over to the next meeting, which had the support of most of the Board members although no formal vote was taken.

A few things are clear in the aftermath of the meeting. The Board seems to have different opinions on this issue. There are some Board members who feel that not enough information was presented to the Board and the public prior to the May meeting to warrant such a decision. They would at least like to have a fuller presentation of both sides of what they now see as a complex issue. There are other members of the Board though who seem unlikely to want to challenge the management. Having a Library Board split on an issue like this one should be expected, and having a full public debate at a Library Board is not a bad thing.

But I think announcing ahead of time that there will be no debate, that Board members should just to listen to the presentations and move on, (as was done by the Chair at the beginning of the meeting) is not the best way to proceed. Still, due to the concerns of councillor Branscombe and others, the discussion will be back on the next Board agenda in September, and that is a good thing.

Since the meeting, most of the press coverage has been balanced and tried to get at both sides of the issue (like the Free Press article referred to in a previous entry). There’s was also some very balanced in depth coverage on CBC radio. Unfortunately, for some there is a tendency to sensationalize these sorts of issues and reduce them to the simple question of whether you think taxpayers should be subsidizing porn in the library. One of our morning talk radio hosts has decided to make ridding the library of porn a crusade. You can always count on the Rush Limbaugh wannabees to jump on sensitive issues like internet censorship and reduce it to a simplistic crusade against pornography.

But the debate is so much more complex than that simple reductive binary. If you view the issue in full context with the understanding that library users have diverse information needs, are often in very vulnerable and sensitive situations, that internet filters are imperfect, and that the border line between the appropriate and inappropriate is often subjective and dependent on the search context, the resulting debate is very different than the simplistic porn vs no-porn question. And this question of how the debate is characterized is closely linked to two competing philosophies of library service. On the one hand the model informed by the foundational core values of librarianship, (an essential part of the LIS program but something off the radar screen in other programs) takes the standpoint of the library patron who has the right to receive information that may be compromised by a commercial filter. On the other hand, we have the “customer-service” model of librarianship which will reduce complex decisions (often involving conflicting interests and values) to simple matters of marketing, branding, optics and customer satisfaction. One of the Board members commented during a later part of the agenda (the marketing director was rolling out the new logo, the result of a branding exercise) that she was tired of hearing library patrons referred to as “customers” and wanted this usage to stop. To which the chair responded, not so long as as I am chair.

So the debate will go on. I think its important for readers of this blog to stay on top of this debate in London and consider sending letters to Board members, to the editor of the local paper (there were some in the Free Press today and they will no doubt continue), or just to spread about this ongoing debate to others.

Samuel Trosow, Associate Professor
University of Western Ontario
Faculty of Information & Media Studies / Faculty of Law