“Let There Be Light.” This phrase is inscribed above the entrance of the first free public library that Andrew Carnegie built in 1883. Carnegie truly created the American public library through his philanthropic library-building efforts around the turn of the 20th century. He saw libraries as places where the enlightenment of knowledge occurs.
Carnegie famously said, “I chose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people because they only help those who help themselves.” He saw public libraries as a powerful force. He believed that the education individuals could obtain through their use of the library was essential to the health of American culture. He called the free public library a “...republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.”
Carnegie required communities receiving the gift of a library to provide for ongoing maintenance and support and to ensure that the library would be free and open to everyone. His buildings also wisely provided separate collection spaces for adults and children.
Despite the best intentions of Andrew Carnegie and generations of good librarians, America’s libraries now find themselves in a crisis of activism. The ideal of a library as a neutral place where patrons can access information from multiple perspectives without the overt endorsement of a single socio-political perspective is almost completely gone. Once upon a time, parents could trust their local librarian to assist them in accessing age-appropriate materials and programming for their children without fear of exposure to content that directly targets their personal beliefs and community standards. This is no longer the case.
No community’s library is exempt from books in the children’s section on mature and politically charged topics. Activist programming, such as Drag Queen Story Hour, is also prominent. At many public libraries, children are taught to question their gender and sexuality, hate their country, hate capitalism, fear a climate change apocalypse, and come to the acknowledgement that they are either generationally oppressed or privileged because of their “race.”
The professional shift from neutrality to activism in librarianship was gradual. In the 1940s, the American Library Association (ALA) began lobbying for greater taxpayer support for libraries. As institutions of higher learning became more progressive and the number of individuals holding advanced degrees in the profession increased, the philosophical underpinnings of the profession became gradually more partisan and ideological.
Over the following decades, the ALA added social activist task forces and roundtables to its structure and gradually included an assortment of activist goals on cultural issues to its core mission. By the turn of the twenty-first century, librarians were being canceled from the profession for opinions that were not aligned with their monolithic political viewpoint. In the last few years, the once subtle and gradual change in ideological stance has taken over and there is no longer any tolerance of other viewpoints. Far from being neutral and unbiased, master’s degree programs in the profession are now deeply ideological, insisting that neutrality is not only undesirable but is also an endorsement of oppression. ALA now even claims that neutrality supports white supremacy and fascism. They essentially require that librarians become radical social justice warriors to receive the professional credential.
In the spring of 2023, a group of like-minded library professionals from across North America began meeting. We had all experienced the shift in the profession toward socio-political activism and divisive philosophies and practices. Through our discussions, we came to the realization that our years of attempted correction of these systemic issues were fruitless and that the best way to steer librarianship back toward neutrality was to create a new professional library organization.
Through the establishment of the Association of Library Professionals (ALP), we seek to guide the profession back to its traditional duty of impartially offering books and resources to all users, while also staying attuned to the needs and interests of patrons and communities. Instead of seeing the legitimate concerns of our patrons, taxpayers, and civilian governors regarding content perceived as propagandistic or unsuitable for minors as an attack on libraries, we should treat all concerns in good faith and make all collection development and item placement decisions in accordance with the standards and sensibilities of the communities we serve. The adversarial approach of the ALA, seeing all concerns as attempted censorship and book banning, will only end in the defunding of libraries and anti-intellectualism.
In just two years, ALP already has members in 39 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. Most of our members hold advanced degrees in library science; however, we regard all library employees as library professionals. Non-librarian advocates for excellent library service are also welcome to join us in reviving library neutrality.
Caleb H. May is a founding member and Immediate Past President of the Association of Library Professionals (ALP). He served the first decade of his career as a director of public libraries and is currently serving as the Director of Library Services at an academic library in Kansas. For more information about ALP, visit https://alplibraries.org/.