RICK ANDERSON, The Scholarly Kitchen; Revisiting: Libraries and the Contested Terrain of “Neutrality”
"The question of whether libraries can – or even should – be “neutral” has been a difficult and controversial one for years. It is now becoming even more so as book bans become more prevalent and command more public attention. Recently, the political Right has increased its efforts to get books on various topics pulled from library shelves, especially in public and school libraries; the Left, on the other hand, generally engages in book banning from a different angle, trying to stop books from being published, calling for them not to be sold, and retroactively censoring books already published. In this politically charged context, the American Library Association offers an incoherent advocacy message, on one hand asserting that libraries must provide “an impartial environment” that offers “information spanning the spectrum of knowledge and opinions,” while on the other decrying “neutrality rhetoric” in librarianship for its role in “emboldening and encouraging white supremacy and fascism.”
A fundamental question remains insufficiently examined: in the context of libraries, what does “neutral” actually mean? Are there ways in which libraries can and should be “neutral,” and ways in which they should not? This post from several years ago examined these questions – ones that seem even more urgent in the current moment than they did then."
