Librarians at Liberty, Vol. 12, No. 1
My job as an anarchist librarian is somewhat unique. Other anarchist librarians work in traditional job settings— public and academic libraries—special collections, but right now I work as a poorly paid, freelance librarian for other activists, via my work with Infoshop.org. So what is an anarchist librarian? How are anarchist librarians different from radical or progressive librarians? Is there an anarchist librarianship beyond library workers who wear the anarchist label? I’d like to discuss, briefly, some ideas about what anarchist librarianship is theoretically. Anarchist librarianship is much like radical librarianship in that it includes many of the same concerns about corporate influence on and in libraries, class and race issues, privatization of library work, social responsibility, censorship, the environment, and so on. Anarchist librarianship is feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-establishment, and for egalitarianism and human rights for everyone. It complements radical librarianship because anarchism has a history of supporting social responsibility, and because anarchism rests on ideas like cooperation, anti-hierarchy, freedom, mutual aid, and so on. Speaking truth to power is something that anarchists are good at. We are excellent gadflys, iconoclasts, critics, curmudgeons, and activists. We criticize, we challenge the powerful, be it the state, the rich, or the guys who speak too much in
a meeting. We are also good at criticizing our comrades, which often gets us into trouble with leftists who discourage dissent amongst comrades. Being able to speak your mind freely is important. Self-censorship among library colleagues exists and it is a problem. Howard Besser gave a talk this weekend about the information commons, about the importance of information commons, about protecting that and enriching that. I thought it was a really excellent talk—everybody that cares about libraries needs to hear that; it’s so important. It’s important to keep our existing commons. I’m for the public library. I like libraries. I want to keep them. It’s important to start there and it’s important to fight for reforms that help keep what we have. We’re fighting a rear-guard action after many years of cutbacks. Proposition 13 started an explosion in anti-tax sentiment among Californians in 1977. Some of this ties in with Chomsky’s argument about expanding the floor of the cage, an argument he made in the ‘90s about how we need to protect the commons. We progressive librarians assume that libraries are a good thing, but are we being critical enough about the very existence of libraries? Ironically, for an institution that is one of the last bastions of the public commons, public libraries, as are academic libraries, are an arm of the state. State funding of libraries relies on violence in the form of taxes. We assume taxes are a beneficial thing, but still taxes are a form of coercion. If you don’t pay your taxes, the state will be violent against you. They will throw you in jail, bring you to court, ruin your life. Most of us who pay taxes assume it is a natural part of living. Death, taxes, and fill in the blank. State funding of libraries depends on violent coercion in the form of taxes. This allows the state to control libraries through various methods. The Patriot Act is a good example. Librarians are all talking about the Patriot Act and what that might mean. It could be rate funding, or little programs to give libraries programs that are popular. Those are purse strings, which they criticize in the art world by saying “bigger grant, longer chains.” This money from the state also supports budgets and salaries, so it tends to make libraries more conservative. Loyalty oaths, that’s a minor thing, but it exists. COPA and CIPA blackmail. Library boards, so-called democratic institutions designed to run libraries, can represent the agenda of other powerful institutions. I would say that we should ask if there are ways for communities to fund libraries other than just the state—that’s something to think about. I don’t know what the answers are: to reconsider opting for a decentralized system, giving more library services to people in the communities. Maybe our libraries are just too big. Maybe they need to spread out more, and be distributed around our communities. Public libraries have a lot of good press. People love public libraries. Circulation figures are high. But how are public libraries seen by people? Earlier today somebody talked about fines. Fines can discourage the poor from using libraries. If fines are high and you forget to take some books back, you owe the library $20–$25 in fines. If you’re on a fixed income, if you’re visiting the food bank, $20–$25 is something that you’re gonna have to not take care of right away. You’ll stop going to the library, or at least stop checking out books. There was news last week about a collection agency being used more and more by libraries. That’s when you get private firms involved in public funds. One time, I officially had
Summer 2004
VOL. 8, NO. 3
Wednesday: Update Infoshop calendar of events. A lot of my everyday work is collecting email, updating web pages, maintaining links, adding new events, and working on problems that come up. Copy content from Wikipedia to Infoshop’s new anti-corporate database (The Matrix). It allows people to add information about corporations to a database. Thursday: Send email to lawyer about Freedom of Information Act requests being sent to the FBI and local police. We’ve been sending FOIA requests concerning information about my FBI record right now. Spend several hours putting together a book order with AK Press for the Crossroads Infoshop. Friday: Do interview with community radio show in Montreal about upcoming elections. That’s where I find out who the current leader of Canada is—I can’t believe I didn’t know that. Saturday: Spend the afternoon painting, cleaning, and scraping paint for new infoshop in downtown Kansas City. Sunday: Play anarchist soccer, followed by barbeque with friends. Come home and do some detective work to figure out why the Kansas City Indymedia web site is off-line. I also get a lot of reference questions via email, requests for info about protests: “What is the anarchist stance on voting?” and “Who do I contact to use this photo in class.” We get a lot of questions at Infoshop.org, but I don’t have time to answer all of them. We now have other collective members answer them and we have an email list for volunteers to answer reference questions.
COUNTERPOISE
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