Category Archives: Freedom to Read

To know the future you must know the past

civilization, Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

Both libraries and archives have an inevitable leaning towards the future. They preserve the past for the benefit of the future. As Richard Ovenden said,

“Every collection, every library is actually about the future. Every archival institution is about the future. How can we know where we are going unless we know where we are from. How can we chart a path to the future without thinking of where we are from?”

 

We need the knowledge of the past in order to look at the past societies with fresh eyes and new ideas and to inspire the future and protect the path to the best future.

As John Stuart Mill so wisely told us, we cannot hold a valid opinion unless we allow it to be challenged. We must permit all ideas to be challenged. Even our most sacred beliefs must be challenged or those beliefs will wither. This is for our benefit and for the benefit of the future. We must consider  and reflect on opposing views. We must not hide them in closets. We do our children no favours if we protect them from contrary views. Their own views will become stunted and weak without challenge. Coddling them from uncomfortable views as so many conservatives, like those in Florida, now want to do, is doing a great disservice to the next generation. Few things help us challenge our own views better than reading the strongest of the challenges to those views.

Where better to go for that than a library?

 

A Champion for Freedom

civilization, Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

John Stuart Mill was the author of On Liberty and a champion, perhaps the greatest champion, of freedom of thought and expression. Richard Ovenden in his lecture at the Toronto Library took note of one of his famous ideas: namely John Stuart Mill’s insistence in On Liberty, that only through the diversity of opinion is there in the existing state of human intellect the chance of fair play to all sides of the truth.”  Often this seems hopelessly optimistic in this day of increasing polarization and decreasing tolerance for a diversity of ideas, but it is still the main hope for lovers of freedom of thought and expression.  Frankly, I have found no better idea.

Societies have a hard time achieving this goal. How can libraries then do it too? Richard Ovenden thought they could be up to that task. He pointed out that it is a fundamental aspect of their role. Libraries work in collaboration with each other and work within networks with each other. They have allies in their momentous task. They can do it! Often if you need to read something they don’t have in their own collection they are quite willing to help you to find it elsewhere and bring it to you.

Libraries take very seriously their job of serving their communities, Ovenden said. And I know this from my own decade of serving on a local library board. The people their love to serve the needs of their reading public. And they are darn good at it.

As Ovenden said,

“What gives us pleasure at the end of the day is thinking that they have helped someone solve a problem or better understanding of some issue. That task is entirely possible and we need to support those institutions and the individuals who work in them and give them the freedom to do that job.”

And they are darn good at it. They can do it if we just give them a chance. And it is one of the most important jobs there is.

 

 

Are Libraries asked to do too much?

civilization, Freedom to Read

 

Around the world libraries are being asked to do things or provide services in many new and interesting ways. In some places they act as shelters for the homeless. In places they act as food banks. In some they dispense health services and professional advice. They act as knowledge resources, community spaces. In Indigenous terms they are like knowledge keepers.  They are expected to reflect the diversity of opinion and to be welcoming of one and all. We also expect them to be, as Nahlah Ayed said, “bastions of free expression.” And then, as if that is not enough, we ask them to uphold democracy for us. All of this leads to the important question: are we asking too much of libraries?

Richard Ovenden had a good answer to this question.  He said, “Society is asking too much of libraries if we don’t resource them adequately to do all of those tasks.”

Libraries that were able to help many a person to make life choices are increasingly under pressure to do less, or even disappear entirely. That is most unfortunate. Particularly when libraries are faced with immense challenges of dealing with an analogue past and digital present such libraries may be unable to do all that is demanded of them. Ovenden said,

“Libraries have become aware of their role as social infrastructure. The have been incredibly adaptive. They’ve been innovative. They have seen how they can make a difference for their communities. We should entrust them to do those things their communities need the most and resource them properly.”

Yet we always ask them to do more. And therefore we must do our part too.

 

Libraries as temples

civilization, Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

 

Richard Ovenden talked about excavations in ancient communities in Iraq and Syria of which I was not aware. He said that in ancient places, librarians often worked in temples!  5,000 years ago, librarians catalogued books. They had clay tablets of course rather than paper bound books, but they worked  in temples. He said “the librarians and archivists were priests!”

 In the France during the Middle Ages, the French national archives, the Trésor des Chartre,  were located in Sainte Chapelle. Only sacred chapels or cathedrals were good enough for libraries. That is how important they were considered. The archives were considered so precious they had sacred connotations.  We have lost some of that reverence  for libraries, for sure since then. Perhaps this is a sign of the decay of civilization in fact.

In the digital age we are surrounded by facts or false facts but libraries are hardly considered precious or sacred. Those days are largely gone. What a shame.

Nowadays, knowledge is abundant but still, we must never forget, fragile and can be easily disrupted disturbed or even maligned. We see that all around us.

It wasn’t long ago that the idea of librarians spending time on going through long lists of books for potential banning or “correction,” as happened in Florida, would have been considered ludicrous. Today it is rather a sad reality. Sometimes, I think, we live in the age of barbarians, or at best, the age of fools.

We have taken ancient liberties—such as the freedom to read or the freedom to think—for granted. To see them besmirched as they have been is deeply disturbing. Is there any chance that there can be galvanizing forces to buck up our resistance to tyranny? Or are these incidents or premonitions of our civilizational decline?

Libraries are truly treasures whether national, regional or local. We must learn again to understand that.

Librarians as Warriors

Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

It is a sad fact that librarians have become warriors. Soldiers for truth. They do that just by the fact of their job which is to preserve and disseminate knowledge.  But libraries have been under attack for quite some time. That forces librarians into battle and bravely and happily librarians have usually been up to the task. They are frequently courageous  and competent foot soldiers.

 

Some libraries in Florida were recently closed so that staff can go through their entire stock of books and materials to ensure that they are complying with the new laws. They need to make sure that they comply with the censorship laws brought in by Ron DeSantis and his cultural warriors of censorship. The staff have no choice. Often, they don’t want to do that, but by law they must. As a result, instead of working hard to make reading materials available to their members they are working hard to ensure the materials are not available.

Librarians have been forced to go through tens of thousands of books to make sure they are acceptable. That is a travesty of their function. Those who require it are part of a basket of deplorables to enlist a phrase with a checkered past.

As Richard Ovenden said, “The idea that libraries are engaged in serious matters for the good of society needs to be shouted out.” They are not dusty old places overseen by ancient schoolmarms. They are places of battle, The battle for civilization. Nothing less.

And the Lies Became Truth

Death of Truth, Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

As Richard Ovenden the Oxford Librarian said in his CBC recorded lecture at the Toronto Public Library:

 

“Libraries and archives provide a diversity of knowledge and ideas. They make it possible to face the present and the future through deepening an understanding of the past. The ideas we encounter, the histories that we understand, and the culture that we engage with help us to make us who we are. But we need this pool of ideas and information to be constantly refreshed if we are to be creative and innovative. This is true not just in the creative fields of art, music, and literature, but more generally. The success of the democracy we enjoy today lies in the free circulation of ideas in order to pour light into the questioning spirit of our democratic processes. This means in part the freedom of the press, but citizens need access to all shades of opinion. Libraries acquire all kinds of content and this resource allows our views to be challenged and for citizens to inform themselves following John Stuart Mill’s insistence in On Liberty, that only through the diversity of opinion is there in the existing state of human intellect the chance of fair play to all sides of the truth.”

 

And we must remember that this is what it is all about—the unreserved pursuit of the truth. In no other way, can we do that. We need the liberty of which Mill spoke to pursue the truth in any meaningful manner. Nothing else will do. We must have that liberty or else the truth will forever be enshrouded and us blinded from it. The task of making the conditions necessary to obtain the truth is a noble task. And, I dare say, a holy task. We must not shrink from it and we must not concede any limitations on our ability and capacity to do that task with all of our power. That may sound overheated. So be it. I think it is true.

 

We should always remember the immortal words of George Orwell from his incredible book 1984: “The past was erased. The erasure was forgotten. The lie became truth.”

The Talk Show President

Freedom to Read, Right-wing Extremism, Trump

 

 

In January 2011 at the annual Washington correspondent’s dinner, the Washington Capitol, like much of the world, laughed at Donald Trump. He was a joke. Just before the dinner Donald Trump had spread the lie that Obama was not born in the USA.  And this was Obama’s chance to get back at him and he took it. Until that night he had been very restrained about this birther story that really annoyed him and which he knew was a racist trope. Obama produced his official long form birth certificate and said Trump could now concentrate on issues that really mattered like “did we fake the moon landing.”  Everyone laughed. He mocked Trump as Trump deserved to be mocked. But in the process, he made an enemy. A Bigly enemy. Trump was stone cold mad. According to Justin Ling, “Trump looked like his head was going to explode.”

Trump had ridden the birther conspiracy for 3 years, pushing himself onto the national stage unlike ever before.  The fact that the Washington media was now scorning him might have been an asset. In the world of right-wing politics it certainly was no drawback. 4 years later as a self-proclaimed political outsider Trump descended the golden elevator in Trump Tower to launch his second campaign for the Republican nomination. He was about to become the most famous man in the world! Life was good.

As Trump said that day:

 

“Our country is in big trouble. We don’t have victories any more. When is the last time anybody saw us beating let’s say China in a trade deal? They kill us. The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. When Mexico sends its people they’re not sending their best. They bring in drugs. They bring in crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume are good people…We are going to make our country great again.”

 

 

And of course, the message implied: Only one man can turn things around. He is a strong man. The man we need. Donald Trump. Only he can save us. That is the clarion call of the fascist. It is dangerous out there and only one man save us, and he is a strong man.

I am not saying America is fascist. I am saying there are many fascists in America and they are attractive to a lot of Americans. Fascism could happen in America. It is by no means impossible. We must be careful and wise.

And of course, like any wanna be fascist Trump had his scapegoats in the cross hairs: immigrants. As he said, “I am going to build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”

Most of the press did not take Trump seriously. Most people did not take Trump seriously. That included me. The Dummy. I thought, like so many others that there was no way Trump would win the Republican nomination. I was wrong. Bigly wrong.

Rush Limbaugh did not laugh. He took Trump seriously and he loved what he heard. He said, “I tell you this is going to resonate with people.” And he was right! He also made another wise comment: “The more the media hates this and makes fun of it, the more support Trump is going to get.” And he was bigly right again.

The extreme right would never be the same again.

The Rise of Barbarism in Ukraine

Classic Books, Freedom to Read

 

Of course, much to our current astonishment just as librarians saved knowledge from destruction at the hands of the Nazis and communists (see my earlier post https://themeanderer.ca/the-holocaust-and-books/) , the same thing is happening in Ukraine. As Richard Ovenden said,

“Librarians in Ukraine are facing major challenges. They are trying to do their main jobs while under attack. The psychological impact is huge: but still they carry on, protecting their collections, innovating with new services, determined to save knowledge and support their communities. What little we can do to help, we must.”

 

Libraries and archives are again being attacked in the Ukraine  by the forces of darkness. Too many of us thought days like this were behind us. Barbarism is never behind us. It can also spring up again.

 

At the time of Richard Ovenden’s  CBC lecture in 2023, 47 public libraries and archives in Ukraine had been destroyed. Ovenden said a further 158 are badly damaged and 276 had received what he called, “some damage.”

To repeat, barbarism is never defeated. We must constantly be on guard.

 

Demonization of Librarians

2018 Trip to Southwest USA, Freedom to Read

 

Besides the banning such great books by such profoundly ignorant people, Richard Ovenden was also troubled about the “demonization of librarians as combatants in the war for our minds.” This has been particularly egregious in the United States.

 

Of course, we know things will only get worse, particularly in the US, as the presidential election gets closer. One party, the Republican Party has staked its territory on the side of compelling the banishment not just of books, but truth itself. Sadly, we in Canada have come to realize that the craziness inevitably flows from them to us. We have a party in Canada that slavishly follows every ugly trend thrown up by our American neighbours. The latest is the Republican War on Woke and Trans, swiftly mimicked by Conservatives in Canada who seem to have very few original ideas.

 

“The American Library Association reports that during 2021-22 there were more than 2,500 book bans in 138 different U.S. school districts and libraries, spread across 32 states covering four million pupils.”

 

Librarians are highly skilled and trained professionals.   Yet in the US and in Canada there have been attacks against librarians as sexual deviants who are grooming children for exploitation. All of this has been done on the thinnest of grounds. Some want to remove all books with sexual content. Others limit the attacks based on gender issues that they don’t want discussed in schools. Such cases are extremely stressing to librarians but are becoming normalized much of it under the dubious rubric of parental rights. We have had parental groups launching attacks against libraries and their staff in Canada by what certainly appears to be a tsunami of ignorance. So far it seems the attacks have not been as successful in Canada as they have been in the US. Perhaps that is sign that the conservative movement is not yet as strong as it is in the US. But it’s getting there.

 

Fortunately, so far, defenders of libraries have been successful in advocating for the freedom to read and the complementary freedom to learn. Ovenden is not blind to “the irony that the more people want to ban books the greater the desire of people to read the books.”

 

Margaret Atwood is one of the most banned authors and she has stood up to the banners saying in effect, go ahead, your efforts will only make people want to read my books the more. And this is likely true. The fact is the book banners are still in a small minority, though admittedly, a loud minority.

 

At one time Bodley’s Library in London used the Roman Catholic index of banned books as a convenient shopping list for books it should acquire.

 

As Ovenden said, “book banners aren’t very bright.” Smart people know diversity in books is one the treasuries of a good library. Book banners are engaged in an assault by the ignorant.

All of this may be amusing, but the sad fact is that in the US, the land of extremes, it is now dangerous to work in libraries in many parts of that country.

That is why it is so important for all of us to support the library staff who are standing on the front line in defense of our core freedoms. As Ovenden said, “libraries and librarians are worth fighting for.

I couldn’t agree more.

 

Steinbach’s Experience

Freedom to Read

 

While I was on the board of the Steinbach Public library we always mildly worried about unfavourable incursions into our library by unhappy citizens. After all we were in the midst of the Bible Belt in Manitoba. As a result, we tried to arm ourselves for a future attack by creating a “Statement of Intellectual Freedom” as  we called it. It was a statement saying we believed in the freedom to read and would oppose efforts to get us to ban books.

 

We never had a serious attack while I was on the Board. Perhaps this was because our first requirement for even considering an objection was that we received confirmation that the objector had read the book. That might have been enough to ward off some attacks.

Today, libraries in southern Manitoba have been met with a number of attacks, mainly from the camps of extreme conservatives and ultra-Evangelicals who have been attacking books as unnecessarily supporting the LGBTQ* community or their allies.

So far, I believe each library has successfully managed to hold off those who wanted to ban books.  If they had a statemen of intellectual freedom they would be well armed to hold off those braying for censorship. It helps to be prepared.

Yet complacency is dangerous.

I certainly hope that in a pluralistic society the tokens or emblems of an open and pluralistic society, such as libraries, can be maintained and protected against assaults by the ignorant and belligerent. As Richard Ovenden said, “we have become too complacent, we have allowed ourselves to permit these institutions to become battlegrounds for other political motivations…we have to take to the barricades.”

He is right. The barbarians are at the gates and we are the defenders of the city of civilization.

And the librarians are warriors.