When librarians speak up: justifications for and legitimacy implications of librarians' engagement in social movements
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2022-0042 |
| Published date | 13 April 2022 |
| Date | 13 April 2022 |
| Pages | 36-51 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Nanna Kann-Rasmussen |
When librarians speak up:
justifications for and legitimacy
implications of librarians’
engagement in social movements
Nanna Kann-Rasmussen
Department of Communication, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen,
Copenhagen, Denmark and
Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose –This article presents a discussion of how librarians’engagement in certain social movements
manifests itself in public libraries, how librarians justify their engagement with specifically the
LGBT þmovement and the climate movement and what it might entail in terms of legitimacy.
Design/methodology/approach –Besides an extensive international literature on libraries and climate/
LGBT þissues, thearticle draws on data from an interviewstudy with librarians fromDenmark and Sweden.
Theoretically,the article utilizesthe orders of worth frameworkby French sociologists Boltanskiand Th
evenot.
The frameworkis used to analyse librarians’justificationsfor engaging in certain agendasin society.
Findings –Active engagement in social and green agendas takes place through strategies of education, efforts
to make the cause more visible in the libraryand by setting an example. Justifications for active engagement in
social movement agendas draw on inspirational, civic, projective and green orders of worth (OoW).
Originality/value –Much of the existing research on librarians who engage themselves in either climate
issues or in agendas concerning minorities has a normativecharacter. However, this study shows that there is
no causal (positive or negative) relation between active engagement in social movements’causes and
legitimacy of libraries, but that the justifications for doing so might have an impact on legitimacy.
Keywords Public libraries, Librarians, Legitimacy, Activism, Cultural policy, Social movements,
Justifications
Paper type Research paper
Introduction: librarians’engagement in contemporary social movements
The relation between libraries and society is a topic which is part of a well-known research
agenda in Scandinavian library research. From this research, we know that the role libraries
play in society is not static but under continuous development –among other things
interacting with various social movements (Audunson, 1999,2005;Hansson, 2010;
Hvenegaard Rasmussen and Jochumsen, 2003;Jochumsen and Hvenegaard Rasmussen,
2006). This article presents a discussion of the coupling between public libraries and
contemporary social movements and agendas, such as the climate agenda, LGBT þrights
and the anti-racism movement. I will argue that attention to different justifications put
forward by both librarians, library developers and library managers can serve as a necessary
perspective to understand what is at stake between libraries and contemporary agendas in
society, and how we can conceptualize this relation. The article uses data from Danish and
Swedish public libraries, but the results from this study will be relevant in other contexts as
well, since librarians, as well as archivists and museum professionals all over the Western
world, engage themselves in social movements and agendas.
JD
79,1
36
The author wishes to thank the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences at Lund University, Sweden
for funding the research sabbatical which allowed me to work on this article.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 16 February 2022
Revised 16 March 2022
Accepted 17 March 2022
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 79 No. 1, 2023
pp. 36-51
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-02-2022-0042
Public libraries in the Western world have the task of supplying citizens with free access
to literature and information as well as possibilities of participating in publicly funded
cultural activities. In other words, the library’s role in society is to contribute to citizens’level
of education, opinion formation and cultural engagement through securing access to
information and culture. On top of this, some (although certainly not all) librarians in Sweden
and Denmark (and in most part of the Western world) also engage themselves actively in
agendas such as the climate movement, LGBT þrights and anti-racism.
Much of the existing research on librarians who engage themselves in either climate issues
or in agendas concerning minorities has a normative character. One type of research wants to
demonstrate that libraries are not neutral places, because of existing structures that favour,
for example, whiteness or heterosexuality (Drabinski, 2013;Hudson, 2017;Schrader, 2009)or
to advocate for libraries to take a stand against climate change (Barnes, 2012;Beutelspacher
and Meschede, 2020;Binks et al., 2014). Another type of research aims at criticizing librarians
for compromising traditional values of information freedom by being reluctant to choose,
display or lend out certain material (Helgason, 2020;Sundeen and Blomgren, 2020). The
purpose of this article is not to endorse or criticize libraries or librarians for engaging in social
or green agendas. The objective is to discuss how this engagement manifests itself, how
librarians justify their engagement with specifically the LGBT þmovement and the climate
movement and what it might entail in terms of legitimacy. Library studies need an inclusive
and descriptive scrutiny on different ideas about and justifications for library engagement in
contemporary movements. In the following sections, I will develop this argument further.
First, I will discuss how engagement in the climate movement and the LGBT þmovement
manifests itself in libraries. Second, I discuss why I consider “activism”and compliance to
cultural policy aims to be inadequate descriptions of librarians’engagement in certain
agendas. Thirdly, I present a theoretical framework, the orders of worth framework, which
will allow for additional types of insights by focusing on the librarians’justifications for
engaging in certain agendas in society. The article concludes by discussing what this might
entail in terms of legitimacy.
Besides an extensive international literature on libraries and climate/LGBT þissues,
I draw on data from an interview study conducted during the spring of 2021. The
interview study consists of semi-structured interviews with six individuals from the
libraryfieldinDenmark(DK)andSweden(SE) (three from each country) who are
actively involved in sustainability issues, LGBTþand inclusion of different other
minority groups. I have identified suitable informants through articles in journals,
published by professional associations in Sweden and Denmark. In Sweden, the
informants have engaged in library debates in Biblioteksbladet (The library journal) or
the journal bis (short for libraries in society). In Denmark, the informants have engaged in
library debates in either Perspektiv (Perspective) or Danmarks Biblioteker (Denmark’s
Libraries). The interviews took place on Zoom, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Each
interview lasted for approximately one hour and was recorded on Zoom and transcribed
afterwards.Theinformantsaremiddlemanagersormanagers(MA),librarians(LI)or
developers (DE) ;some are employed in local public libraries (LO), whereas others in
regional library development (RE). All are anonymized through these codes, so that DK-
LI-LO refers to a Danish LIbrarian from a LOcal library, whereas SE-MA-RE refers to a
Swedish MAnager from a REgional library. All quotes have been translated by me. In the
following, I will discuss how library engagement with social movements manifests itself.
The interviews function as examples and explications of the points made. Thus, the
article is not solely a report on an interview study; rather, the analysis of scholarly
literature and interviews together illustrate how librarians’engagement in social
movements manifests itself and how library professionals justify their engagement what
it might entail in terms of legitimacy.
When
librarians
speak up
37
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