Progressive Librarians Guild was formed in New York City on January 1990 by a group of librarians concerned with our profession's rapid drift into dubious alliances with business and the information industry, and into complacent acceptance of service to an unquestioned political, economic and cultural status quo. See the 1997 Letter from Mark Rosenzweig to PLG members describing changes in the organization that had come about up to that point.
PLG reaffirmed, significantly, that the development of public libraries was initially spurred by popular sentiment which for one reason or another held that real democracy requires an enlightened citizenry, and that society should provide all people with the means for free intellectual development. Current trends in librarianship, however, assert that the library is merely a neutral institutional mediator in the information marketplace and a facilitator of a value-neutral information society of atomized information consumers.
A progressive librarianship demands the recognition of the idea that libraries for the people has been one of the principal anchors of an extended free public sphere which makes an independent democratic civil society possible, something which must be defended and extended. This is partisanship, not neutrality.
Members of PLG do not accept the sterile notion of the neutrality of librarianship, and we strongly oppose the commodification of information which turns the 'information commons' into privatized, commercialized zones. We will help to dissect the implications of these powerful trends, and fight their anti-democratic tendencies.
PLG recognizes that librarians are situated as information workers, communications workers, and education workers, as
well as technical workers. Like workers in every sector, our work brings us up against both economic and political issues.
Cataloging, indexing, acquisitions policy and collection development, the character of reference services, library
automation, library management, and virtually every other library issue embody political value choices. PLG members aim to
make these choices explicit, and to draw their political conclusions.
The Progressive Librarians Council was the antecedant of today's Progressive Librarians Guild. PLG's Progressive Librarian journal includes an article about the Progressive Librarians Council and its Founders.
For additional information on the history and principles of progressive librarianship, see the
following:
A Tribute From a Progressive Librarians
Guild Cofounder written by Elaine Harger in the Sandy
Berman festschrift Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sandy Berman But Were Afraid to Ask (Scarecrow,
1995), Mexican Circle of
Progressive Studies on Librarianship, Progressive
Librarians Around the World Web site, and Taralee Alcock's paper, Free Speech for Librarians? A Review of Socially Responsible Librarianship,
1967-1999.
Many PLG members are also affiliated with Librarians
for Peace.
PLG's Commitment
Progressive Librarians Guild is committed to:
- providing a forum for the open exchange of radical views on library issues.
- conducting campaigns to support progressive and democratic library activities locally, nationally and internationally.
- supporting activist librarians as they work to effect changes in their own libraries and communities.
- bridging the artificial and destructive gaps between school, public, academic and special libraries, and between public and technical services.
- encouraging debate about prevailing management strategies adopted directly from the business world, to propose democratic forms of library administration, and to foster unity between librarians and other library workers.
- critically considering the impact of technological change in the library workplace, on the provision of library services, and on the character of public discourse.
- monitoring the professional ethics of librarianship from a perspective of social responsibility.
- facilitating contacts between progressive librarians and other professional and scholarly groups dealing with communications and all the political, social, economic and cultural trends which impact upon it worldwide, in a global context.
