Fortunate Son: the ALA and Librarianship 1968-1980
Jim
Introduction
By 1980 the country was in a calmer mood but in the words of the President, Jimmy Carter, a sense of "malaise" seemed to grip the country. It had become apparent that the long post-World War II economic boom was over. The economic difficulties that had begun in the late 1960s continued, and America was facing high inflation, long gas lines and the unusual situation of American citizens being held hostage in a country that had overthrown a long-time American ally and replaced him with a radical regime that considered the United States to be the "Great Satan." President Carter, producing budgets more conservative than those of his Republican predecessors, faced revolt within his own political party. Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Senator with considerable personal baggage, waged a spirited and credible, if ultimately unsuccessful, battle to take the Democratic nomination away from Carter. Ronald Reagan, a former movie actor and California Governor, won the Republican presidential nomination although many in his own party thought that he was so conservative as to be unelectable. Dealing with American hostages remaining in the hands of Iranian militants, facing high inflation and scarce fuel resources, and reeling from a defeat in Vietnam that seemed to indicate the end of American hegemony in the world, the American people chose the former actor to lead them. Bonzo had gone to Washington and the turbulence that once swirled through the country around the issues of Civil Rights and war and peace seemed to have come to an end.
The period between 1968 and 1980 was also a seminal period in my own life. In 1968 I was 13 years old, coming to grips with my awakening sexuality and growing ever more distrustful of a government that seemed obsessed in waging a war that I could neither understand nor support. The hope for Black liberation through peaceful means seemed to die with Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. The carnage of the Chicago Democratic convention seemed to symbolize the very death of the nation as I had understood it as a child. In a very real sense the events of that year have effected much of my later life.
The American Library Association also "lived" through this period in history. This
paper will look at how the organization reacted to events in the larger society,
and how the library profession developed and transformed during this turbulent
time-frame.
I am a Librarian, and while I don't believe in censorship, I do believe in good taste! The cover on the October 1 Library Journal showing a student holding up the book entitled Dirty Helen while another student at the same table is holding up the Holy Bibleis is surely a violation of good taste. I would expect LJ to be more selective in cover illustrations, even in this age of deteriorating morals (LJ 93:1 (Jan 1, 1968):15).From Sanford Berman, a periodicals librarian at UCLA, came a different take on taste:
Over the past three years, I have unhesitatingly and openly stocked the Realist at all libraries under my supervision, which ranged from the U.S. Army Special Services installation in Worms and Mannheim to a small largely Protestant college for American Stuttgart. In that time, only one objection arose to the magazine, and that from a southern Methodist chaplain, a barely literate paratrooper who delivered his Sunday sermons in jump boots. On the other hand there still reverberate in my memory the gales of healthy, cleansing laughter evoked from scores of readers by that unkempt irreverent rag.I find the Realist a cathartic, a necessary antidote to the daily flow of leering suggestion, outright hypocrisy and colossal nonsense supplied by the mass media and whole brigades of unimpeachable public figures. Sometimes it misfires, but mostly it gets right down to the nitty-gritty, demolishing with ridicule whatever is fake, pompous, callous, cruel, prudish, or idiotic. Moreover, it often drags out of dark closets certain uncomfortable but urgent subjects that "nice" people would rather not think about. (LJ 93:1 (Jan 1,1968):15).
Here we see two sides of a cultural struggle that had begun to develop in preceding years, prominently in the free speech movement at the University of California at Berkeley during the early 1960s political struggles surrounding Civil Rights and Vietnam, when profound tensions developed about matters of style, taste, and personal habits and lifestyles. On one side were the traditionalists, more comfortable with the society that had developed in the post-World War II period. Father *did* know best and children were expected to dress and comport themselves in manners similar to those of their parents. Rock and Roll, which developed as a synthesis of white country and western and black rhythm and blues forms, was greeted with an alarm and dismay that could be interpreted as a rejection of the racial integration that it seemed to predict and promote. By 1968 a competing "counter-culture" had fully bloomed among white youth and the early demands for racial equality and integration sought by blacks had given way in part to the demand for "Black Power." With the murder of Martin Luther King more blacks seemed to reject the policy of non-violence and gradual change. Black sections of many cities burned in violent upsurges. Interestingly, many of the issues being confronted by librarians now, at the approach of the new century, were also being talked about in 1968. Also in the letters section of the January 1968Library Journal, the Administrator of the Bethel Public library in Connecticut, Edward J. Gallagher, commented on the inadequacies of Library Science education as promoting a style of "collection development" that would undoubtedly render much material as unfit for selection:
It seems to me that library science in general has yet to realize that the administration of a public library is a business and, therefore, that business methods should apply. It is unfortunate that the productivity of public libraries cannot be measured in the same manner as a business. Some of the clerical routines still in existence in the majority of our libraries would not be tolerated in the business world because of their time-consuming natures and their lack of productivity.It is too bad that logic does not occupy a greater amount of the library students' time. Even simple logic would have dictated the abandonment of some of our pet notions and installed better business methods as well as methods to increase our knowledge in the realm of information retrieval. It is a well-known fact that certain changes in the Dewey classification have been withheld because of the influence of librarians who have been disinclined to make the necessary clerical adjustments in their inventories to bring this classification into line with present day needs.
In reference to Bill Katz's correspondence in the same issue, I note that he is a professor of library science. It seems to me that, in a period of knowledge explosion, library science teachers could put their talents too better use in researching and teaching better methods of information retrieval rather than devoting their time to the advocacy of placing literary excrement in the libraries. . . .
. . . .There are certain areas of the world where poverty-stricken people exist amid human and animal excrement, filth, and squalor. They do not have the ability to escape from it. Is it possible that our literary efforts have become so impoverished that that we must also exist in the midst of literary excrement , the effluvium of the depravity of some of our modern intellectualism. (LJ 93:1 (Jan 1, 1968):18).
The February issue of Library Journal carried an article by Barbara Hagist decrying "resistance" and "reluctance" in the selection of vinyl recordings for libraries. In Ms. Hagist's view the library of 1968 was serving its patrons poorly by refusing to acknowledge changes in popular taste and failing to keep abreast of technological advancements. Hagist , the head of Fine Arts Department of the Tulsa City-County Library System in Oklahoma, sent out a national record-selection survey to numbered 130. Hagist bemoaned the fact that librarians were far behind the public as a whole in purchasing records in the newer stereo format, preferring instead to continue making purchases in the older monaural format. She noted that 74 of 105 librarians reporting back reported that only 0 to 4 percent of their recordings were in the stereo format. She contrasts to findings in a Tulsa library questionnaire, where 54 percent of respondents would be more likely to use the library collection if more stereo records were available. She also notes that tape may be the medium of the future for music and that librarians should monitor this possibly emerging technology.
Hagist also faults libraries for the content of their recordings. She notes that while few libraries have literary collections that are over 50 percent classical, over half of the responding libraries have music collections that are over 70 percent classical. She notes that library users would prefer having more popular material and that non-users would greatly prefer non-classical material:
Jazz, which is often ignored by record librarians, is one of the finest representations of American culture and our only original musical innovation. Popular music, including Broadway musicals and movie soundtracks, certainly reflects the present era. Folk music represents many cultures and historical periods. (LJ February 1, 1968:520)
However Hagist does not fully embrace the "give them what they want" philosophy:
Some aspects of popular music seem to hold the least justification for library expenditure. This is not to exclude the entire popular scene. As in current fiction, there is great variance in the quality of composition. Much ephemeral material is produced which does not meet the library's standards of selection on grounds of composition and lasting value. (LJ February 1, 1968:520)
Hagist suggests that a popular recording of the day--"Coming To Take Me Away" by Napoleon XIV--would not be acceptable for a library collection because of "weak composition" even if were performed by the New York Philharmonic. It should be noted that although I have not heard that recording in some years, the melody still resonates inside my brain from time to time; perhaps this is partial refutation of the weak composition claim. That for many years it was a staple on the folkloric Dr. Demento radio show, also suggests that the song has popular appeal and some interest as an artifact. (The subject matter--mental illness and confinement to largely discredited asylums-- does probably make it politically incorrect.) Still, Hagist's evaluation of this work make dubious her stated position against censorship:
Judgment on the part of the record librarian must not be confused with taste, which can mean prejudice and censorship in record selection. To select records on the basis of personal taste is to violate all principles of librarianship. (LJ February 1, 1968:520)
Whatever the contradictions, it is probably indisputable that the one "masterpiece" of Napoleon XIV has had greater circulation and acceptance than the entire body of work of Ms. Hagist. Sometimes justice does prevail.
February 1968 also saw the publication of an article by Lowell Martin entitled "The Changes Ahead." (LJ Februar 15, 1968:711-716). Martin, then vice president of Grolier Incorporated and a former librarian, makes several predictions about the future of the profession. After declining to describe the exact nature of the library which would be established on the moon in 1975, he discusses a number of issues that are still of relevance today. In general his prescience is impressive, and he seemed to have an idea where the "cutting edge" was at the time:
The technologies that come closest to home for the library are those of computerization and communication distribution. A library is a place for storing knowledge and under a system that facilitates identification and retrieval as needed, which is also a definition of a computer. The printed page is a means for transmitting content from a source that knows to recipient who wants to know, and this is also the function of the new communication devices (711)
And:
Either the library will prove flexible and use the new technology where it does the job better, or the library will remain primarily book-oriented, steady in its tradition, while the computer for information storage and retrieval, and electronic devices for distant and convenient communication will develop separately (711).Also:
Whatever the structure in time--and very possibly in not too much time--everything from the price of eggs in the supermarket this morning to the latest analysis of the composition of the surface of the moon will come directly into the private home, the office, the laboratory, and the classroom by electronic image rather than by means of a library reference book (712).And finally:
The alternatives are clear: either the library as of today, book-centered plus appendages in nonbook form, or the library as a resource center, with a new materials mix, the multimedia collection, determined by purposes and clientele (712-13).Although Lowell Martin was wrong in some of his particulars, it is interesting how right he was in general. (It is also interesting to note how quickly attention turned away from manned exploration of the moon. It was not the reason, but one could almost imagine a culture shamed by Gil Scott-Herron and the Last Poets. "A rat just bit my sister Nell, and Whitey's on the moon."
1968 was also a year when the library literature focused on the move toward trade unionism that effected the University of California at Berkeley (Eldred Smith, "Librarians and Unions: The Berkeley Experience," LJ February 15, 1968:717-20). Ralph W. Conant wrote a provocative piece, "Black Power in Urban America" (LJ May 1, 1968:1963-1967),:and civil libertarian Charles Rembar predicted that bringing obscenity out of the darkness would lessen its allure ("The End of Obscenity," LJ May 1, 1968:1868). There was general outrage when the LJ gave its October 1 issue a vertically split cover that compared the "flower people" of the Haight-Asbury district in San Francisco to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The 1968 American Library Association Convention took place in Kansas City, Missouri. A topic of concern was the relationship between the ALA central office and the individual chapters. Unionization was also discussed and Robert Porter of the American Federation of Teachers delivered a presentation which, according to the August LJ, was less than well received.
Perhaps one of the more interesting presentations was by Don Roberts, from the Venice branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. Entitled "Post McLuhan Library Publications," it declared that "at least 50 percent of our publications should be electric; if we can have nine track stereo on airplanes, why can't we have it in libraries?" He advocated setting up communications with "networks" (whatever that meant in 1968) in individual communities, although he thought the window of opportunity might be closing. Describing books as "ancient devices," he advocated that "underground methods" be used to reach out to the non-reading, non- library using public.
Discussion also involved developing post-masters degrees that would be something different than the Doctoral degree, something that seems very akin to the Specialist degree at IU. 1968's Melvil Dewey medal award winner, Jesse Shera, decried the fact that librarianship and research were strangers to each other, repeating the now familiar refrain that library schools do a poor job of teaching research skills. William North, legal counsel for the ALA, counseled common sense in intellectual freedom fights. Arguing against resignation as the proper remedy for any lost battle, he instead promoted moderation as a virtue.
