Libraryhttps://hdl.handle.net/10680/4222024-03-19T13:56:19Z2024-03-19T13:56:19ZThe Role of Multidimensional Library Neutrality in Advancing Social Justice: Adapting Theoretical Foundations from Political Science and Urban PlanningDudley, MichaelWright, Johnhttps://hdl.handle.net/10680/20682023-10-27T08:00:25Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Role of Multidimensional Library Neutrality in Advancing Social Justice: Adapting Theoretical Foundations from Political Science and Urban Planning
Dudley, Michael; Wright, John
There is an ongoing, polarizing debate in the library profession and scholarship regarding the perceived incompatibility between library neutrality (embedded in the profession through the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights), and social justice goals. This article asserts that the growing antipathy on the part of some library practitioners and scholars towards neutrality and intellectual freedom is owed at least in part to the profession and scholarship having never articulated an adequate definition of what is meant by neutrality. As a result, the profession lacks a theoretical framework situating the library and library staff as political actors within a multicultural and largely urban society. We argue that such a framework may be drawn from the literatures of political science and urban planning. By positioning libraries and library workers within the context of liberal-democratic institutions – as is the case for urban planners in their theoretical literature – LIS theory can find more durable foundations for its core values. Stressing planning’s commitments to the participation of multiple publics, to dialogue, mediation and to consensus-building through liberal institutions, we develop a multidimensional understanding of neutrality premised on values, stakeholders, processes and goals which we then apply to these planning modes. Finally, we propose a model of “Communicative Librarianship” as best exemplifying these four dimensions of neutrality and their attendant democratic commitments.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZRecent Literature on the Duncanson Sisters of New NetherlandDobson, John Blythehttps://hdl.handle.net/10680/20552023-03-21T08:00:22Z2013-01-01T00:00:00ZRecent Literature on the Duncanson Sisters of New Netherland
Dobson, John Blythe
2013-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Family of Hendrick Cock of AmsterdamDobson, John Blythehttps://hdl.handle.net/10680/20542023-03-17T08:00:31Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZThe Family of Hendrick Cock of Amsterdam
Dobson, John Blythe
2011-01-01T00:00:00ZNevius, Lenaerts, and Sassenbroeck: Updates and New AncestryDobson, John Blythehttps://hdl.handle.net/10680/20532023-03-17T08:00:40Z2010-01-01T00:00:00ZNevius, Lenaerts, and Sassenbroeck: Updates and New Ancestry
Dobson, John Blythe
2010-01-01T00:00:00Z