Revolting librarians > Continuing it?
Revolting librarians > Continuing it?
Each of us wants desperately - as an individual and as a librarian - to do something in the way of extending library service and promoting our belief in the value of free access to information and inspiration for all, in a way which the work situation that we are in does not permit us to do.
A case in point is the migrant project undertaken by several members of the New Jersey Social Responsibilities Group this summer. The significance of it lies in the fact that it had to be carried out by a few dedicated people on their own time and largely with their own money, because the service was not being offered by the libraries that should have as a matter of course offered it. The nitty-gritty question to be faced here is: are we really being socially responsible librarians by continuing to provide a stop-gap service to the migrants on our own, or should we seek ways to force the issue of library service to migrants into the consciousness of the people who are in a position to really do something about it on a regular basis?
I have obviously loaded the question, and you are all welcome to talk back to me in the next issue of this Newsletter. But I firmly believe that the most important function of NJSRG is to act as a conscience and as a pressure group vis-a-vis what we like to call the Library Establishment in New Jersey. For this reason, I feel we have to expend our greatest efforts in making service for migrants a responsibility which is accepted by the libraries in those areas where migrants work, rather than in taking it upon ourselves, and, in effect, relegating it to the status of extracurricular activity. Instead, we must insist on it as basic service. Moreover, it is imperative that we examine the very bases of the inadequacy of library service in New Jersey, the recognition of which is the one thing that all of us share. It is a copout to say that we can't do anything about the total situation, which is why some of us try to do some one small thing in some small specific area.
But real "social responsibility" in Libraryland lies in finding out where basic, long-range change can be effected and then finding a way to make it happen. One good way we can make it happen is to pay close attention to what keeps the institutions we work in from letting us do what we feel libraries should do. At the meeting in Princeton some of us said that the State Plan for Library Service to the People of New Jersey, recently evaluated by Kenneth Duchac & Associates, has a great deal to do with this, and that we had better produce some input here. If you're interested, get in touch with the SRG committee to watchdog NJLA's Library Development Committee, which is working on its own evaluation of the State Plan.
What we hope to do is to run a program at the NJLA Spring Conference which will permit open discussion of the problem of planning library service for all the people of New Jersey, and then to present a SRG statement of concerns regarding the plan at the membership meeting. A formal statement presented on behalf of a group of, say 100 librarians, really can have some effect upon what ultimately happens. If you have ideas, complaints, or any kind of insight regarding the functioning of area libraries, information networks, interlibrary loan, reciprocal borrowing, film service, state and federal support for libraries, standards and/or incentives for better library service in New Jersey, put it on paper, or call one of us and dictate. But stop sitting around and grumbling that there is nothing you can do to change things.