So here in Florida, the FLA was forced by DeSantis to disassociate - an issue that was kicked off by DeSantis telling the State Library that LSTA grants could not be allocated to any project involving the ALA or its affiliates. It was in a meeting with the FLA President and the academic library directors discussing this issue that I was told by a library director, when I pointed out libraries devaluing neutrality is why were are in this position of attack from the Right, that "neutrality is privilege". And this in the same breath where DeSantis' attacks on freedom of expression were being denounced. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/31/florida-conservative-national-library-ala-00124516
Florida is an interesting (and scary) situation, since it's the state agency pressuring FLA and others to refuse funds and therefore disassociate. Alabama and Georgia are trying to do the same.
I asked FIRE to look into Florida and they said if we can sunshine emails showing that the ideological views of the ALA President are cited as the reason for denial of LSTA funding, they would sue the state. I have a journalist friend working on that. So if Georgia explicitly states this, FIRE would probably get involved.
It gets worse in FL. Many counties have also dropped ALA membership. County commission reasons have been ALA's Marxist orientation. These are BIG counties--Hillsborough is 1.6 million people. Sarasota (434K). Manatee (400K).
But FLA has not quit ALA--but so long as FLA is part of ALA many librarians won't be funded to attend.
Yeah, FLA is trying to walk a tightrope on this as they don't want pressure on the multitype library consortia or the State Library for any collaborations. I should have said FLA has been force to downplay their association for the sake of the libraries they work with. DeSantis has by design under the influence of Rufo used the same playbook as the woke - vague rules and guidelines that create a chilling effect and dare people to find the line. I wouldn't go so far as to say ALA has a Marxist orientation but rather they ride the fence of catering to critical librarianship crap while not quite making it more than performative lip service. As in everything where there are real problems with woke nonsense, the people who think they are solving the problem are just making it worse. I submitted a lightning round proposal to FLA to do something on libraries abandoning neutrality and haven't heard anything. I am in lots of meetings with librarians around the state and I have more than once heard people say they are dropping their ALA membership over disagreements with direction. But won't be specific. I feel like in libraries we have a real epistemic ignorance problem and think that the Malcolm Kyeune/Adolph Reed thesis that wokeness is a way for entry level workers who haven't really developed skills via experience invent a new "skill" that they defacto have and older librarians don't. That it is a class politics for the "scared of becoming working class" which is very different from a class politics for the working class. Hence why I find the whole Marxist label, either claims by people like the ALA president or thrown around as a demonizing term by the rightwing censors so comical.
O, the "Marxist" orientation that has been picked up in FL county commissions leaving discussions was derived from the current ALA's President's tweet but no, I don't think ALA is Marxist either..but that tweet sure launched a thousand ships.
Do you want to know how upset I am about all this, Brian? The last few months I have been working on Wikipedia and librarian articles. I've added a lot of tables. Thinking. The av. person using a SE will find them. And if this av person looks at library topics they will see that we aren't ideological over our centuries of existence. The ALA website is difficult to use and may over emphasize aspects of the field that give the casual looker a skewed impression.
I agree that Marxism used as a signifier is not the same as people who left Cuba because of Castro would view it...but that's a lot of complexity. The word is so laden for so many that it takes over sense.
The 1963 Access Study also found northern libraries lacking.--“No one should have been surprised that branch libraries discriminate against Negroes, since all public institutions in the United States had discrimination against Negroes built
into them. This fact is well known in the South; it is time the North woke up to it.” -- Virginia Lacy Jones, 1963 (35)
Access to Public Libraries
(Chicago: American Library Association, 1963); “The Access to Public Libraries Study, “
ALA Bulletin 57 (September 1963): 742-745.(33)
57 (September 1963): 744.(36) “Report on the study of Access to Public Libraries by the Library Administration Division to the ALA Council Midwinter Meeting,”
True, it's national, and ALA has had a national advocacy focus for a long time. More recently, though, I think some of these organization-level priorities do not reflect broader member priorities and concerns, and this is to the detriment of advocacy efforts.
100% agree. I think ALA was wrong to get rid of ASCLA as there isn't a gathering place for SLA people w/in ALA now.. I have suggested American Libraries have a feature on SLAs. Our focus on national issues has made ALA forget that it was the SLAs that gave us LSA, etc.
Caroline, thank you! This is very helpful context and history for the current "dissociative" moment we're in, not only with library associations but also for other professions where there's sundering over some fundamental ideas about mission and purpose. about norms of scholarship and tolerance of different viewpoints. Key insight for me is how groups with different belief systems can learn to work together productively, within an overarching pluralistic ethos, that we've discussed before in HxLIbraries and on this substack.
Thank you. I enjoyed the historical overview. I'd be interested in a more explicit analysis of how it relates to the recent rejection of the ALA by state groups. TBH, I haven't been following that too closely. For someone living in CA, the comments about what is happening in FL, for example, seem to be coming from an alternate universe.
I'm glad you enjoyed the historical overview! I think the most obvious connection between the earlier instances of disaffiliation and the present is the region, as both were and are concentrated in the Southern US. Another key similarity is that in past and present cases, broader political fissures were mirrored within ALA membership, particularly disagreements around mission/purpose/identity of librarianship. That being said, the current conflict differs in that it is (to my mind) more visible, with the state library groups using more aggressive tactics.
Disagreements about the mission, purpose and identity of librarianship have been building for some time, and are especially acute now, reflecting larger fracturing in society. And other professional associations are experiencing the same. Dissenters within AMA, APA, AERA, and SPSP are demonstrating these rifts by starting new associations, or leaving, or writing and speaking about their reservations about changes in policies that reflect a generally congruent ideology about the new "social justice."
Some years ago, Howard Gardner and others did a multi-year study, the 'Good Work' project, about what constitutes meaningful professional work, based on excellence and ethics, by interviewing professionals in a number of fields, especially journalism and genetics. Maybe this should be a text that librarians return to for reflection on what librarianship should be.
Excellent article. Thank you! One of my favorite books was "Eric Moon: The Life and Library Times" by Kenneth F. Kister. If readers enjoyed Caroline's article I highly recommend this book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3721072-eric-moon. I am also going to point out a new library association forming called the "Association of Library Professionals" https://alplibraries.org/
So here in Florida, the FLA was forced by DeSantis to disassociate - an issue that was kicked off by DeSantis telling the State Library that LSTA grants could not be allocated to any project involving the ALA or its affiliates. It was in a meeting with the FLA President and the academic library directors discussing this issue that I was told by a library director, when I pointed out libraries devaluing neutrality is why were are in this position of attack from the Right, that "neutrality is privilege". And this in the same breath where DeSantis' attacks on freedom of expression were being denounced. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/31/florida-conservative-national-library-ala-00124516
Florida is an interesting (and scary) situation, since it's the state agency pressuring FLA and others to refuse funds and therefore disassociate. Alabama and Georgia are trying to do the same.
The bill in GA specifically states as a reason that ALA is Marxist.
I asked FIRE to look into Florida and they said if we can sunshine emails showing that the ideological views of the ALA President are cited as the reason for denial of LSTA funding, they would sue the state. I have a journalist friend working on that. So if Georgia explicitly states this, FIRE would probably get involved.
Here is the GA Bill https://www.legis.ga.gov/api/legislation/document/20232024/221694
It gets worse in FL. Many counties have also dropped ALA membership. County commission reasons have been ALA's Marxist orientation. These are BIG counties--Hillsborough is 1.6 million people. Sarasota (434K). Manatee (400K).
But FLA has not quit ALA--but so long as FLA is part of ALA many librarians won't be funded to attend.
Yeah, FLA is trying to walk a tightrope on this as they don't want pressure on the multitype library consortia or the State Library for any collaborations. I should have said FLA has been force to downplay their association for the sake of the libraries they work with. DeSantis has by design under the influence of Rufo used the same playbook as the woke - vague rules and guidelines that create a chilling effect and dare people to find the line. I wouldn't go so far as to say ALA has a Marxist orientation but rather they ride the fence of catering to critical librarianship crap while not quite making it more than performative lip service. As in everything where there are real problems with woke nonsense, the people who think they are solving the problem are just making it worse. I submitted a lightning round proposal to FLA to do something on libraries abandoning neutrality and haven't heard anything. I am in lots of meetings with librarians around the state and I have more than once heard people say they are dropping their ALA membership over disagreements with direction. But won't be specific. I feel like in libraries we have a real epistemic ignorance problem and think that the Malcolm Kyeune/Adolph Reed thesis that wokeness is a way for entry level workers who haven't really developed skills via experience invent a new "skill" that they defacto have and older librarians don't. That it is a class politics for the "scared of becoming working class" which is very different from a class politics for the working class. Hence why I find the whole Marxist label, either claims by people like the ALA president or thrown around as a demonizing term by the rightwing censors so comical.
O, the "Marxist" orientation that has been picked up in FL county commissions leaving discussions was derived from the current ALA's President's tweet but no, I don't think ALA is Marxist either..but that tweet sure launched a thousand ships.
Do you want to know how upset I am about all this, Brian? The last few months I have been working on Wikipedia and librarian articles. I've added a lot of tables. Thinking. The av. person using a SE will find them. And if this av person looks at library topics they will see that we aren't ideological over our centuries of existence. The ALA website is difficult to use and may over emphasize aspects of the field that give the casual looker a skewed impression.
I agree that Marxism used as a signifier is not the same as people who left Cuba because of Castro would view it...but that's a lot of complexity. The word is so laden for so many that it takes over sense.
The 1963 Access Study also found northern libraries lacking.--“No one should have been surprised that branch libraries discriminate against Negroes, since all public institutions in the United States had discrimination against Negroes built
into them. This fact is well known in the South; it is time the North woke up to it.” -- Virginia Lacy Jones, 1963 (35)
Access to Public Libraries
(Chicago: American Library Association, 1963); “The Access to Public Libraries Study, “
ALA Bulletin 57 (September 1963): 742-745.(33)
57 (September 1963): 744.(36) “Report on the study of Access to Public Libraries by the Library Administration Division to the ALA Council Midwinter Meeting,”
The ALA renamed the Washington Office during COVID.
It has a big staff mainly focused on national issues:
https://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/ppa
True, it's national, and ALA has had a national advocacy focus for a long time. More recently, though, I think some of these organization-level priorities do not reflect broader member priorities and concerns, and this is to the detriment of advocacy efforts.
100% agree. I think ALA was wrong to get rid of ASCLA as there isn't a gathering place for SLA people w/in ALA now.. I have suggested American Libraries have a feature on SLAs. Our focus on national issues has made ALA forget that it was the SLAs that gave us LSA, etc.
Caroline, thank you! This is very helpful context and history for the current "dissociative" moment we're in, not only with library associations but also for other professions where there's sundering over some fundamental ideas about mission and purpose. about norms of scholarship and tolerance of different viewpoints. Key insight for me is how groups with different belief systems can learn to work together productively, within an overarching pluralistic ethos, that we've discussed before in HxLIbraries and on this substack.
The ALA has seemed like bloatware for a long time now. Maybe it's time to start anew from scratch. (I know, unpopular opinion...)
I think they tried merging Divisions into CORE but so far CORE hasn't been too clear to me.
And in West Virginia:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/west-virginia-criminal-prosecution-librarians-teachers-books-1234970923/
Thank you. I enjoyed the historical overview. I'd be interested in a more explicit analysis of how it relates to the recent rejection of the ALA by state groups. TBH, I haven't been following that too closely. For someone living in CA, the comments about what is happening in FL, for example, seem to be coming from an alternate universe.
I'm glad you enjoyed the historical overview! I think the most obvious connection between the earlier instances of disaffiliation and the present is the region, as both were and are concentrated in the Southern US. Another key similarity is that in past and present cases, broader political fissures were mirrored within ALA membership, particularly disagreements around mission/purpose/identity of librarianship. That being said, the current conflict differs in that it is (to my mind) more visible, with the state library groups using more aggressive tactics.
Disagreements about the mission, purpose and identity of librarianship have been building for some time, and are especially acute now, reflecting larger fracturing in society. And other professional associations are experiencing the same. Dissenters within AMA, APA, AERA, and SPSP are demonstrating these rifts by starting new associations, or leaving, or writing and speaking about their reservations about changes in policies that reflect a generally congruent ideology about the new "social justice."
Some years ago, Howard Gardner and others did a multi-year study, the 'Good Work' project, about what constitutes meaningful professional work, based on excellence and ethics, by interviewing professionals in a number of fields, especially journalism and genetics. Maybe this should be a text that librarians return to for reflection on what librarianship should be.
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Work-Howard-Gardner/dp/0465026087
Excellent article. Thank you! One of my favorite books was "Eric Moon: The Life and Library Times" by Kenneth F. Kister. If readers enjoyed Caroline's article I highly recommend this book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3721072-eric-moon. I am also going to point out a new library association forming called the "Association of Library Professionals" https://alplibraries.org/