Intellectual Freedom: The Library's New Philosophy
In the 1930s the philosophy of public libraries in the United States began to shift away from paternalistic and moral endeavors of ensuring only 'good' books reached the hands of their patrons. Instead it began to focus more on intellectual freedom and people’s right to know.
The library was now portrayed as an institution which could play a vital role in promoting and preserving democracy in America by assisting the successful working of self-government. This was 'to be done by giving all the people free and convenient access to the nation's cultural heritage and the day's social intelligence. (Harris, 1972, p. 40)
The Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read Statement, and Banned Books Week are all examples of the libraries philosophical shift over the decades in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The library was now portrayed as an institution which could play a vital role in promoting and preserving democracy in America by assisting the successful working of self-government. This was 'to be done by giving all the people free and convenient access to the nation's cultural heritage and the day's social intelligence. (Harris, 1972, p. 40)
The Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read Statement, and Banned Books Week are all examples of the libraries philosophical shift over the decades in the 20th and 21st centuries.
ALA Adopts the Library Bill of Rights
On June 19, 1939, the American Library Association adopted the Library Bill of Rights at an annual conference held in San Francisco. The Library Bill of Rights didn’t mark the beginning of a shift towards promoting intellectual freedom, rather it was the product of the already shifting philosophies within the American library profession of that decade.
During the 1930s several events began to inform this philosophical shift for librarians including the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and events outside the country like the rise of Adolf Hitler. According to Douglas Campbell (2014) who reexamined the origins of the adoption of the Library Bill of Rights, the "Smoot-Hawley Tariff act was an event that began to unify librarians on a national level against censorship, viewing it as an antidemocratic idea and contrary to the idea of intellectual freedom and self-improvement" (p. 45). The tariff wanted to ban “immoral articles” and the ALA opposed it on the grounds that they saw it as censorship of foreign literature.
In addition to the opposing of the tariff, Campbell also notes a string of ALA conference speakers that discussed the importance of access in the library including novels of all kind, which decades before had been seen as controversial by some librarians. One particular lecture at an ALA conference in 1933 was conducted by Howard Mumford Jones. He lectured on “The Place of Books and Reading in Modern Society” which was a response to Hitler’s rise in Germany, Hitler’s “banning of all publications that contained ‘inaccurate information’,” and “the May 10th book burnings on Berlin’s Opera Square” among other related topics (p. 47). However while speakers and other ALA outsiders encouraged American librarians to uphold intellectual freedom, the ALA was for some time ambivalent to take a stance on the issue. The ALA’s inaction did not stop the shift towards fighting censorship. When the ALA adopted the Library Bill of Rights in 1939, their document was heavily modeled “almost verbatim on three of four clauses from Forrest B. Spaulding’s Library Bill of Rights for the Des Moines Public Library, adopted by its board in November the year before” (p. 52). What this says about the fight against censorship in libraries is that it seems to have started from the ground up and not something dictated by the ALA to start with. Eventually the ALA would back their Library Bill of Rights through committees on censorship specifically the Intellectual Freedom Committee which collects data on banned books and provides advice to librarians throughout the country when handling book challenges.
During the 1930s several events began to inform this philosophical shift for librarians including the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and events outside the country like the rise of Adolf Hitler. According to Douglas Campbell (2014) who reexamined the origins of the adoption of the Library Bill of Rights, the "Smoot-Hawley Tariff act was an event that began to unify librarians on a national level against censorship, viewing it as an antidemocratic idea and contrary to the idea of intellectual freedom and self-improvement" (p. 45). The tariff wanted to ban “immoral articles” and the ALA opposed it on the grounds that they saw it as censorship of foreign literature.
In addition to the opposing of the tariff, Campbell also notes a string of ALA conference speakers that discussed the importance of access in the library including novels of all kind, which decades before had been seen as controversial by some librarians. One particular lecture at an ALA conference in 1933 was conducted by Howard Mumford Jones. He lectured on “The Place of Books and Reading in Modern Society” which was a response to Hitler’s rise in Germany, Hitler’s “banning of all publications that contained ‘inaccurate information’,” and “the May 10th book burnings on Berlin’s Opera Square” among other related topics (p. 47). However while speakers and other ALA outsiders encouraged American librarians to uphold intellectual freedom, the ALA was for some time ambivalent to take a stance on the issue. The ALA’s inaction did not stop the shift towards fighting censorship. When the ALA adopted the Library Bill of Rights in 1939, their document was heavily modeled “almost verbatim on three of four clauses from Forrest B. Spaulding’s Library Bill of Rights for the Des Moines Public Library, adopted by its board in November the year before” (p. 52). What this says about the fight against censorship in libraries is that it seems to have started from the ground up and not something dictated by the ALA to start with. Eventually the ALA would back their Library Bill of Rights through committees on censorship specifically the Intellectual Freedom Committee which collects data on banned books and provides advice to librarians throughout the country when handling book challenges.
Nazi Book Burning & World War IIAs mentioned above, international events were informing the shifting philosophies of the American public library. The rise of Hitler in Germany and his book burnings in May of 1933 were clearly on the minds of many working in libraries across the United States. Lectures on intellectual freedom were not the only response to Nazi Germany. Two libraries were created as “counter-symbols to Nazi book burning” (Merveldt, 2007, p. 523). One library was established in Paris, The German Freedom Library, while the other was founded in Brooklyn, New York on December 1934. That library was called The American Library of Nazi-Banned Books. The New York library was founded by the Brooklyn Jewish Center and focused on many works by Jewish authors that had been burned by the Nazis. By World War II, the Brooklyn Jewish Center had “assembled about 500 titles of Nazi-banned books” for the library (p. 529).
The library as a symbol for democracy and intellectual freedom took hold in the United States during World War II. The government used the Nazi book burnings as a propaganda tool on posters, like the one depicted on the right. Produced in 1943, the poster shows a photo of the Nazi book burning and emphasizes that free Americans can still read those books. In fact when the United States joined the war, many libraries throughout the country “offered public programs, mounted exhibits, and created information centers on a host of issues, from defense jobs to rationing” and “joined those who mobilized the world of learning and culture for the national defense” (Peiss, 2007, p. 372). It’s safe to say that global events really helped solidify the library’s movement towards a new philosophy that upheld intellectual freedom. |
An excerpt from the film Book Banning, featuring a clip from the CBS Television Network's See It Now with Edward R. Murrow from 1955
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The Freedom to Read During the 19th century, American libraries favored a more paternalistic role, judging 'good' and 'bad' books for the sake of their readers. This however was following the views on censorship that were widely accepted at the time. In the 1930s and 1940s, views shifted on censorship as well as the definition of it evolved. Intellectual freedom was lauded, a clear response to the political climate of the time. The American library would not, however, always be in solidarity with the political sentiments that prevailed during the 20th and 21st century. Different statements, programs, and organizations would be created in response to the encroachments on intellectual freedom. For example, the Freedom to Read Statement was adopted in 1953 as a response to the conservative atmosphere ushered in by the McCarthy era (Gravois, 2004, pp.6 – 7) with a Freedom to Read Foundation eventually established in 1967. As another example, Banned Books Week was first “launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries" (About, n.d., n.p.).
The video on the left is a clip from the film Book Banning which was “part of the University of Washington Educational Media Collection of legacy and archival moving image material” (Book Banning, n.d., n.p.). It shows the chief librarian of LA County and an official of the American Library Association John Dale Henderson discussing a Mrs. Ann Smart who was on a committee that advocated removing certain controversial books from high schools in San Francisco. The clip is a great example of what libraries were coming to stand for during the 1950s as well as the rest of the 20th century, reflecting a sentiment that is still upheld by the ALA today. |