A librarian, a priest, and a prison warden walk into a bar

On libraries, neutrality, and soulcraft

The neutrality debate obscures a deeper and more significant shift toward soulcraft in library work, which seeks to intentionally influence and shape patrons’ value systems and beliefs.

“Entering the hospital wing at Eastern State Penitentiary” by Themurph2 under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The neutrality debate in libraries isn’t really about neutrality. 

At least, that’s my takeaway from participating in the Freedom To Read Foundation’s two-day virtual symposium, “Where Intellectual Freedom and Social Justice Meet: A Call to Action.”

Ostensibly a forum to explore the intersection between intellectual freedom and social justice, the symposium also featured library thought leaders who took aim at the notion of neutrality in library practice, and featured a break-out session on “Moving Beyond Neutrality.” Panelist Dr. Nicole Cooke highlighted the need for “radical” changes to library thought and practice, observing that neutrality is a fallacy because library work inherently involves making decisions about what materials to add and keep in the collection, how those materials are described, how community members gain access to those materials, and even who is welcomed or permitted in the library in the first place.

Writing for Publishers Weekly, Dr. Cooke and colleagues outline historical evidence of the neutrality fallacy. Drawing parallels to historical exclusion and inequity at the national level, they demonstrate how Black and other marginalized people were denied access to libraries. It is at this particular macro level of analysis that they argue against neutrality rhetoric:

 “Neutrality in libraries is a concept often employed without regard for what it means in practice or in context with our greater society. As components of and contributors to their communities, librarians can never be ‘above the fray’ —nor have librarians ever existed as ‘impartial referees.’ Societal and community changes exert force on libraries; libraries in turn exert force on society.” (emphasis added)

I actually think this premise is correct – and I still think neutrality is important to library practice. That’s because I believe the question is not whether libraries are, or should be, neutral, but rather who is the proper agent of social progress.

Photo by Devon Divine on Unsplash.

Social Justice in Library Work

For some, libraries are social institutions with a primary responsibility to create social progress at the societal level. Research by Stephen MacDonald and Briony Birdi finds that these library workers view neutrality as subservient to progressive social values (doi:10.1108/JD-05-2019-0102 pp. 343-44, open access version). One study participant explained, 

“I think some of the other professional values might be more important than neutrality [...] social issues I think are probably the most important.”

Another participant provided this example:

“We do positively push certain political agendas; LGBT [groups] are working with libraries at the minute [...] you could argue that’s taking a political stance.”

Yet another asserted:

“We should become advocates for causes; I want to threaten our neutrality because I don’t think we should have neutrality.” 

Altogether, five of the seven interview participants opposed neutrality on the grounds that library work should advance politically and socially progressive causes.

What does this look like in practice? E. E. Lawrence provides one example. In his thought experiment, “On the problem of oppressive tastes in the public library,” Lawrence deconstructs the readers’ advisory service - when library workers provide reading recommendations to patrons based on the patrons’ interests and preferences - and reimagines it as a venue for social progress. Lawrence highlights the tension between the moral duty of library workers to serve individual patrons and the moral duty of library service to advance social equity. Invoking A. W. Eaton’s work on preferential taste as a source of oppression and Robert Hauptman’s investigation of socially embedded professional library ethics, Lawrence concludes that 

“Librarians’ obligation to advance democracy thus provides us with the justification for recommending diverse books to all readers, even those who actively disprefer them” (p. 1092).

Such recommendations, Lawrence argues, maximize social justice work while “minimally” impairing patron autonomy through “nominally” coercive means (p. 1101). Lawrence provides a practical example of what social justice library work looks like in user interactions.

What these neutrality critiques have in common - the library neutrality fallacy in the face of social inequity, the desire to advance social justice through library work, and the subordination of individual patron information needs to societal aims - is not neutrality per se, but soulcraft. The neutrality debate obscures a deeper and more significant shift toward soulcraft in library work, which seeks to intentionally influence and shape patrons’ value systems and beliefs. Bruce McFarlane characterizes social justice in university curricula aimed at molding students into “good citizens” of the world as an example of secular soulcraft (doi:10.1080/07294360.2014.956697 p. 344). In library work, the design or practice of information resources and services with the intent to influence patrons’ worldviews, including - and perhaps especially - in the pursuit of social justice, is a form of soulcraft.

Photo by Ahmed M Elpahwee on Unsplash

Soulcraft

Soulcraft is rooted in religious traditions, in which faith leaders, elders, and other recognized authorities guide adherents in the ways of moral righteousness, asceticism, and other avenues to the sublime. The Catholic sacrament of confession is one example. During confession, a parishioner seeks reconciliation with God by disclosing their wrongdoings to a priest, who intercedes on their behalf and provides absolution in the form of penance. Penance may involve prayer, meditation, or other actions prescribed to heal the rift with the divine. The soulcraft of the sacrament of confession seeks to restore universal order through the submission of the individual to a divine authority. McFarlane points out that the origins of soulcraft in the university setting trace back to the monastic origins of the academy. 

Another secular institution that engages in soulcraft is the prison. Here again, restorative justice, or the restoration of social order, requires the submission of the offender to penance overseen by an authority. Eastern State Penitentiary, once a model to the world of progressive penal reform, remains a monument to soulcraft in carceral systems. Inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, Eastern State was designed to reform its inhabitants through penitent reflection brought about by solitary confinement, Biblical study, labor, and the constant possibility of surveillance. This prison model was replicated the world over for nearly a century, ultimately fading away amidst debates as to the effectiveness and humaneness of solitary confinement, but not before Charles Dickens could visit Eastern State and leave with this impression:

“In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who designed this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing. I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.”

Neutrality as Non-interference

The move toward soulcraft in library practice applies social engineering techniques like nudging, choice architecture, and cognitive infiltration (all compliments of Cass Sunstein et al.) to information services. These techniques purport to preserve the target’s autonomy while influencing their decision making “in their best interest” or in the interest of society at-large. But does this libertarian paternalism have a place in libraries?

Defense of neutrality in library practice tends to rely on the recognition of intellectual freedom as a core value in libraries. As a result, when two library values - such as intellectual freedom and social justice - come into conflict, library workers are stuck trying to determine which value should take precedence. Those who point to intellectual freedom and library neutrality as potential pathways to social justice are accused of legitimizing hate speech and providing cover to extremists at the cost of excluding or retraumatizing members of already marginalized communities.

I believe a third core library value is in play - namely, privacy. Neil Richards defines intellectual privacy as 

“the ability, whether protected by law or social circumstances, to develop ideas and beliefs away from the unwanted gaze or interference of others” (p. 389, emphasis added).

Richards goes on to extol libraries as “the traditional institution in which the right to read privately and autonomously has been developed and protected” (p. 419, emphasis added), and to outline the practice of intellectual freedom and privacy in library work. 

Neutrality in library practice fulfills a moral duty both to the patron’s intellectual freedom and to the patron’s intellectual privacy through a commitment to non-interference that maximizes the patron’s autonomous freedom of choice in what to read (and not read). Soulcraft in library work, even in the service of social justice, thus impairs both intellectual freedom and intellectual privacy. In this sense, efforts to advance social justice that interfere with the freedom to read conflict with not one, but two core library values: intellectual freedom and intellectual privacy.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Who will save your soul?

A librarian, a priest, and a prison warden walk into a bar. The warden turns to the priest and says, “The prison book has done more good for the world than the Good Book.” The librarian interjects: “Ah, but if only we could get everyone to read the right book.”

Neutrality in library and other public-facing work does not deny the need for social progress – it merely respects the individual as the proper agent of that progress. 

Neutrality as non-interference is described in the Kalvern Report for the University of Chicago. The report acclaims,

“The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic…. The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints. And this neutrality as an institution has its complement in the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action and social protest. It finds its complement, too, in the obligation of the university to provide a forum for the most searching and candid discussion of public issues.”

Neutrality is thus not a preference for the status quo, as is often claimed, but a deference to individuals to make up their own minds about how the status quo should be improved upon, and to take action accordingly. The same can be said for neutrality in libraries: that the purpose is not to preserve the status quo of inequity and marginalization, but to provide a forum in which individuals can interrogate that status quo, and imagine and implement better alternatives.

True change happens by choice, not by coercion. In the domain of information, forced exposure to contrary views can actually backfire by causing people to retrench into their original views and beliefs. Library workers can certainly advance the cause of social justice by selecting resources for their collections, making resources more discoverable through descriptive cataloging and engaging displays, and updating access policies to ensure that the library serves its community as broadly as possible. But when it comes to deciding what to read and not to read, patrons must be maximally free to make their own choices without interference. Neutrality in library practice is a form of non-interference that upholds patrons’ intellectual freedom and intellectual privacy. Soulcrafting is the domain of religion and the roundhouse - not of libraries.

Sarah Hartman-Caverly is a co-moderator of HxLibraries. She writes about the compatibility of human and machine autonomy from the perspective of intellectual freedom. Her recent work includes “Long tail metaphysics: The epistemic crisis and intellectual freedom.”

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