Foundations Discussion #1: History
06 September 2023
Discuss what or who is missing from Rubin and Rubin's (2020) brief history and how learning more about that "what" or "who" might help us understand current issues. Use at least one resource that discusses another "who" or "what" in the world history of libraries as part of your discussion.
In their brief history development of libraries in the United States, Rubin and Rubin (2020) present a list of “key characteristics of public libraries” in their section covering the topic. One of these characteristics is that they are “Open to all: A fundamental tenet of public libraries is that everyone in the community can access the collection.” However, as is mirrored by the continued disparity in minority presence within the profession, this is followed up with “This is not to say that every group has been made to feel welcome. At different times, various subsets of the population have not found public libraries friendly or accommodating to their needs” (Rubin & Rubin, 2020, Figure 2.1). While Rubin and Rubin incorporate a selection of figures from different marginalized identities, including a lengthy section to Black librarians’ successes in providing access to their communities, the lack of comprehensiveness in representing the diversity of the United States remains a flaw in Rubin and Rubin’s very framing.
Of course, while this is likely a result of publishing constraints on the authors’ part, these biases have arguably been embedded into the profession since its inception. Rubin and Rubin provide the revisionist interpretation of Michael E. Harris as a counterpoint:
“…the public library collection was not designed for the common person but catered to the educated and upper classes…this pattern has been repeated time and time again, as evidenced by the fact that public libraries then and today are run by elites and attended by a disproportionately large number of upper- and middle-class patrons.”
Despite this, the democratic purpose of libraries prevented them from being completely exclusionary. But, as Harris argues in his paper, purpose and function cannot be so conflated, and the exclusionary implementations had to be dismantled before public libraries could truly open up (Harris, 1972). For example, the Dewey Decimal System, the bedrock of classification and organization, was riddled with its namesake’s biases concerning minorities in its original implementation.
As Dorothy Porter, a librarian Howard University orates,
“‘Now in [that] system, they had one number—326—that meant slavery, and they had one other number—325, as I recall it—that meant colonization […] In many “white libraries,” […] every book [written by an African American], whether it was a book of poems by James Weldon Johnson, who everyone knew was a black poet, went under 325. And that was stupid to me.’”
Porter would go on to propose a more thorough classification for her needs, and would further devote her career to dismantling the biases surrounding her academic field (Nunes, 2018).
So, what of the space-makers working in public libraries? While the various wealthy philanthropists of America were inarguably instrumental in funding and building the spaces still used today, they almost certainly would not have become truly open to all without the intervention of people of color working to make it so. Without any gestures towards the expansiveness of identities providing access to their fellow minorities, Rubin and Rubin’s survey sorely misses the true breadth of people working in librarianship.
References
Harris, M. E. (1972). The purpose of the American public library in historical perspective. Library Journal.
Nunes, Z. C. (2018, November 20). Cataloging black knowledge. Perspectives on History. https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-history/december-2018/cataloging-black-knowledge-how-dorothy-porter-assembled-and-organized-a-premier-africana-research-collection
Rubin, R. E., & Rubin, R. G. (2020). Foundations of library and information science (5th ed.). American Library Association.