Contemplating the “Library Faith” in Times of Crisis

The Public Library Inquiry as Lesson and Treasure

Robert Devore Leigh. Courtesy of the University of Wisconsin Digital Commons

A few of my favorite things

Greetings, readers of Heterodoxy in the Stacks! Today’s missive plumbs the depths of the heterodox history archives, exploring the Public Library Inquiry, Robert D. Leigh, and the library faith. “Have you heard of the Public Library Inquiry?” is a question I have asked librarians with a fervor that one may reserve for talking about their latest crush, or a memorable dessert. Though over 70 years old, the Public Library Inquiry nevertheless demonstrates how questions of purpose and the role of heterodoxy in librarianship have long preoccupied the profession. I first encountered the Public Library Inquiry in 2007 as a graduate student, and after all this time I am still excited to talk about it. I hope you will enjoy reading about it!

The Public Library Inquiry was a study commissioned by the American Library Association in the late 1940s with the intent to qualify the role of public libraries in American life. The Carnegie Corporation supported the Inquiry’s work with a $200K grant from the Carnegie Corporation — over $2.7M today. Crucially, the ALA did not want the study to be led internally by ALA staff, nor any library professionals, because they wanted the Public Library Inquiry to be as objective as possible. ALA leadership believed this would lend the study and its findings additional legitimacy and credibility. Thus, the Social Sciences Research Council was tapped to direct it. The SSRC in turn tapped Robert Devore Leigh to direct the study.

Now I love talking about the Public Library Inquiry, but truth be told I love talking about Robert D. Leigh even more (when speaking about him, I tend to enunciate his middle initial to make it clear that when I declare “I’m obsessed with Robert D. Leigh” I am not in fact waxing rhapsodically about the Confederate general). Leigh was a political scientist with a PhD from Columbia University. He taught at several institutions and worked as a researcher for the Federal Health Administration, where he conducted research on sexual health. More notably, he was recruited to serve as the inaugural president of Bennington College in Vermont. During World War Two, Leigh was the director of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service. Immediately prior to his tenure with the Public Library Inquiry, he had chaired another large study, the Commission on the Freedom of the Press. Also known colloquially as the Hutchins Commission, this study explored how mass media was organized in the United States, its role in public life, and how it could better fulfill this role.

Following his tenure as director of the Public Library Inquiry he spent the remainder of his life as a library researcher, educator, and advocate. He went on to serve as the Dean of the Library School at Columbia University, oversaw major studies of library services in California and the then-new state of Hawaii, and he died of a heart attack… while on his way to ALA Midwinter! Thus, although he had no affiliation with or training in libraries prior to the Public Library Inquiry, his experience seems to have made him a convert, given that right up to the very end he was devoted to libraries and librarianship. Some may shrug and say “eh, sounds like this guy was just a professional bureaucrat,” but to me R.D. Leigh was a Renaissance man, and the library world benefited greatly from his involvement.

Findings of the Public Library Inquiry

I will assume you are a thoughtful reader, and your response so far is along the lines of “how fascinating! Tell me more about the Public Library Inquiry and this Leigh fellow!” Dear reader, I am more than happy to oblige. The Inquiry produced seven books and five reports, with the centerpiece of these being the monograph authored by Leigh, The Public Library in the United States. The other books and reports homed in on specific functions and areas of concern to libraries, include librarianship and library management, multimedia in libraries, government information, and mass media, to name a few. In the main report, The Public Library in the United States, Leigh delineates what he says are six assumptions about public libraries in a democratic society such as the United States:

(1) Opportunity to learn

This first one I think is self-explanatory.

(2) Freedom of communication

Here is he is referring to free speech and freedom of expression.

The rest of the assumptions, beginning with the third are what Leigh called “pair values”. Consider the third assumption:

(3) Popular control and expert direction

Here Leigh means that on the one hand libraries are locally controlled, and at the same time they are informed by the values and training of professional librarians.

(4) Special groups and the mediating function

I am momentarily skipping the fourth assumption because I want to pay special attention to it, so moving on —

(5) Centralization and local participation

Leigh acknowledges that for the purposes of administration, control often has to be administered centrally, but there have to be avenues for local participation.

(6) Technological change and institutional tradition

He concludes by acknowledging that rapid and widespread technological change will necessitate institutional adaptation, and the challenge for leaders of such institutions is to identify which values and practices should endure and which should be revised in light of such changes.

Getting back to that fourth assumption:

Special groups and the mediating function

I imagine that what Leigh had to say about this will resonate with all of us who value the role that libraries play in fostering access to viewpoint diversity. Leigh points out that in large, modern countries with geographically dispersed populations, it is easy for people to form separate groups where they rarely if ever encounter someone whose values or perspectives differ significantly from their own — what we may call being stuck in echo chambers, or silos. These are what he means by “special groups”. Libraries, he argues, serve a mediating function by providing the means for these groups to encounter one another. He writes:

For purposes of cohesion and effective political action on a large scale such countries have an especial interest in cultivating those institutions which serve the whole community, avoid identification with limited, partisan segments of the population, and occupy a position as the meeting ground for persons of diverse types and backgrounds, constituting an effective symbol of communal fraternity.

By “those institutions” Leigh is referencing libraries.

I think the six assumptions of the Public Library Inquiry have held up remarkably well considering the study is over 70 years old. However, it is this fourth assumption that I would argue is more critical than ever, and the one that has sparked some of the most heated internal debate in recent years over the purpose and role of libraries in communities. Is the role of the librarian to promote access to a variety of views and opinions, or to intentionally promote a specific perspective? Are we content neutral in the programs and events held on library property, or do we deliberately champion some perspectives and minimize access to others on ideological grounds? The findings of the Public Library Inquiry offer clear answers to these questions.

The library faith

So, what of the library faith? Leigh articulates the library faith in a few different ways. Expressed in its most basic or modest form, he sees it as the belief in the virtue of the printed word, especially of the book, the reading of which is held to be good in itself (i.e., reading is good for you). “In its more ambitious form,” Leigh writes that the library faith is “a belief in the power of books to transform common attitudes, to combat evils, or to raise the cultural level.” In this way, the library faith is grounded in a belief that libraries provide an invaluable, albeit intangible, service. And yet, Leigh was not saying this what librarians should believe; he was trying to articulate the core beliefs that guided the profession, based on the research findings. What the Public Library Inquiry findings revealed is that many librarians agreed with objectives about role and importance of libraries but observed a gulf between how things were versus how they should be. In other words, there was a disconnect between the faith and the reality on the ground.

For, alas, libraries are not powered by faith alone. Librarians lamented that the library faith did not translate to sufficient funding, staffing, materials, or infrastructure. Survey respondents indicated a pronounced feeling of always having to do a lot with very little. Their responses also indicated that use was concentrated among a few core users and groups. And that while many of the librarians understood that libraries were appreciated, they saw that appreciation did not guarantee support. As a public good, they saw how positive contributions of libraries were difficult to quantify. Finally, they bemoaned that libraries were seen as less authoritative sources for information compared to mass media. It is this last piece that relates to one of the most compelling suggestions from the Inquiry.

Libraries vis à vis commercial mass media

One of the most important contributions of the public library inquiry is that it situates libraries in the mass media landscape. This undoubtedly reflects Robert D. Leigh’s experience as the research director for the Commission on Freedom of the Press, the three-year study on mass media he had overseen prior to this one. In the Public Library Inquiry, he elaborates on what distinguishes libraries from commercial mass media.

In delineating the defining features of mass media, Leigh makes clear which institution he believes to be more valuable. He denigrates commercial mass media for its unflinching focus on celebrities and personalizing, relentless sensationalism and distortion, avoidance of the unpopular and experimental, the newness of news (focus on immediate as opposed to information of enduring value), and volume and deadlines (where expediency is prioritized over accuracy). To counterbalance the poor information offered by mass media outlets, he proposes that libraries position themselves as more authoritative providers of information in the following ways:

(1) For contemporary materials selected from each year’s output by the judgment of experts as the most reliable and authoritative, including artistic products of merit as determined by competent critics; and the promotion of the use of such materials by all available means.

(2) Where materials selected to give adequate and balanced representation to new, critical, often unpopular ideas, and to the preclassical, contemporary, unusual, and experimental in the arts can be brought into full use.

(3) For the selection, organization, and promotion of the use of materials which are not new, but of great current relevance because of their enduring quality.

(4) Of selection, collection, and organization of the whole range of valuable materials in the form of print, picture, record, and film, in such a way as to focus the full resources of record quickly and easily on a particular subject or problem for those seeking such a service.

Leigh was not, of course, writing for the present day. Some may argue that the advent of the Internet and digital media has obviated Leigh’s concerns, saying “users may find whatever they want, whenever they want! I can curate my news feed precisely. Time and space collapse as copies of wax cylinder recordings are as retrievable as Tik Tok clips. This is my age of mechanical reproduction, and it freaks me out!” Yet librarians well know that sources must be evaluated for authority, access can be fleeting in any format, and preservation is a resource-intensive process requiring a long-term strategy. Thoughtful curation becomes more, not less important with the proliferation of media. Indeed, at a time of falling confidence in mainstream media and government institutions, libraries are well-positioned to promote themselves as reliable information centers — provided they are genuinely representative of community interests; the popular and the unpopular.

As stated at the outset, I could go on (and on, and on some more) about Leigh and the Public Library Inquiry. But I shall resist the temptation and jump to the recommendations. Based on the Inquiry’s findings, Leigh suggested the following: first, that librarians must clarify purpose of libraries and librarianship. There did not seem to be a uniform or cohesive understanding, and this had a lot to do with that gap between the library faith and reality of what library operations looked like. Second, libraries should position themselves as public-serving information centers that would provide an alternative to the distorted and limited information provided by the profit-centered mass media. And perhaps the most controversial suggestion was that libraries should repurpose as “civic libraries” that do not seek to serve all members of the community, but focus on select elite users who could become “opinion leaders” that deepened democratic engagement in the community. This final recommendation found little favor among librarians then and would likely be even less well received now. Nobody’s perfect — not even my main man Robert D. Leigh.

History lessons; or treasure

Whenever we attempt to put the past in conversation with the present, we must reckon with the historical in all of its complexity. This post has offered a charitable interpretation of what we can learn from the Public Library Inquiry; however it is certainly not my contention that American librarianship in 1950, let alone all of American life, presented entirely similar or desirable conditions relative to the present. The past can teach us much, but context is always key.

That being said: reflecting on the Public Library Inquiry in 2022, I see many useful connections. What can be called the Library Faith — how we define our purpose and values — is in flux. We continue to observe this gulf between stated objectives and reality; libraries remain overwhelmingly popular but not all are well-resourced. The popularization of vocational awe demonstrates the persistence of this tension: that many librarians feel called to librarianship, and this commitment compels them to tolerate difficult conditions, which can lead to disillusionment and dissatisfaction. The influence and presence of commercial mass media and how this shapes (or warps) public discourse was of great concern in 1950 and has only become more urgent since. And finally, there is this question of the place of viewpoint diversity in libraries: what Leigh called the “unpopular” or what we may describe as heterodox.

I do not have concrete recommendations (other than you should explore the life’s work of Robert D. Leigh, including the Public Library Inquiry). What I do have are something more like musings; about how the questions asked over 70 years ago are urgent questions now. To wit:

What is the role and purpose of librarianship in a democratic society? What are our shared values — what is our “faith”? In this moment where these shared values are in flux, could this be a moment to rearticulate the value of libraries in a democratic society, and especially the importance of providing access to information that is unpopular or difficult to come by? Where that access is treated as a resource and not a commodity? And while this may be the least sexy question, it is nevertheless terribly important: what is the best way for the profession to study itself and make recommendations going forward? There is very much a need for these questions to be deeply engaged with, if only the professional bodies would prioritize the asking of them with genuine openness and humility.

The cultural historian and critic Christopher Lasch wrote: “I see the past as a political and psychological treasury from which we draw the reserves (not necessarily in the form of ‘lessons’) that we need to cope with the future.” It is my sincere belief that library professionals possess such a treasury. Historical events such as the Public Library Inquiry provide rich material to inform our conversations about pressing contemporary issues; moreover, they show many of these issues are complex, contextual, and not at all new.

References and further reading

Megan Brenan, “Americans’ Trust in Government Remains Low,” Gallup, September 30, 2021.

Fobazi Ettarh, “Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves,” In the Library With the Lead Pipe, January 10, 2018.

Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979.

Robert D. Leigh, The Public Library in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press, 1950.

Chris McGreal, “Broken and Distrusting: Why Americans Are Pulling Away from the Daily News,” The Guardian, July 17, 2022.

The Public Library Inquiry: Reminiscences, Reflections, and Research (special issue), Libraries & Culture 29 (1), Winter, 1994.

Douglas Raber, Librarianship and Legitimacy: The Ideology of the Public Library Inquiry. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.

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