GSLIS Professor Alistair Black recently discussed the importance of inclusion in his teaching and research with Associate Professor Kathryn La Barre. Black’s remarks are part of the interview series Reflections on Inclusion, which explores the School’s efforts to respect varied perspectives and diversity of experiences.
Black’s research focuses on the history of libraries, librarianship, and information management. He teaches courses in information history, library buildings and society, historical foundations of the information society, public library history, and libraries in film.
I’d like to start with a discussion of the words “inclusion” and “exclusion.” In Britain, these words came into play with policy initiatives in the ’90s, as a kind of rebranding of more left-wing fiery terms like oppression, disaffection, exploitation, and the fight for emancipation and rights and equalities of all kinds. In Britain, the use of “inclusion” and “exclusion” signified a kind of softening, rebranding, and marketing of these more contentious terms, with the explicit aim of occupying the middle ground. Yet I like the older terms. As a historian, I’ve long been interested in studying issues of oppression and emancipation.
I’d like to share a story of how I came to study history. I first went to university (London) to study economics. The economy had dipped and I remember my father saying at the time that economics could provide me with a better future. But my first love was history, and after a year I was allowed to switch to it. The day before starting on the history program I was in a pub with some friends, when we were attacked by racist thugs. I was taken to the hospital where my facial wounds were stitched. I remember clearly the determination this event gave me to do well in my studies, because history teaches us to be tolerant and appreciative of other cultures and shines a light on the pasts of those who have not necessarily been in positions of power. History can give one a cultural education and cultural awareness in the truest sense. I find that the discussions of diversity at GSLIS over the past few years have assumed a racial dimension, which is counter to the multi-dimensional sense of the word used in Britain and which I have in my mind. In Britain, diversity references multiple dimensions—gender, class, ability, social class—and also alternative viewpoints that can be political and religious.
In my own historical research I have always been aware of past exploitation and accompanying struggles for emancipation. Much of my early work addressed the issue of social class and the way in which libraries historically have brought social class into sharp focus. This isn’t just an issue of social control of the working classes. Libraries in Britain began as institutions that helped the middle class form its class consciousness, in opposition to the traditional landed aristocracy. The middle class were the representatives of the new industrial society and helped initiate and develop public libraries partly for their own use, a fact that many pass by in examinations of the history of libraries.
Libraries in Film (590LF)
Description: Feature films are not just a form of entertainment; as time passes, they become historical documents that throw light on the societies that produced them. In this course, we will view a selection of films released in the second half of the twentieth century that have librarians as their main protagonists. In association with both primary sources and secondary readings, we will use the films as vehicles for analyzing and discussing various phases of, and episodes in, US and UK library history.
A basic starting point in this course, which is new this term, is looking at the ways in which film reflects society. One of the films we discuss is Frank Capra’s The Negro Soldier (1944), which explores notions such as the growth of the democratic spirit and the importance of social change, and contains threads that form the precursors of the civil rights movement, engaging as it does with portrayals of racial equality.
We also look at the film Storm Center (1956). The central character is a librarian who is asked to withdraw a book on communist ideology from circulation in exchange for a promise to fulfill her request to build a children’s wing for her library. This is a classic film about censorship, political oppression, and the growth of a progressive movement within librarianship. Bette Davis stars in this movie, which is loosely based on the experiences of Ruth Brown and her dismissal for promoting civil rights in her town. We discuss if the film represents the start of the route to a more progressive librarianship—an awakening realization that librarianship needs to pay attention to the underserved—and if it represents continuity to work today or asynchronous development. As part of this discussion, we read selections from the book Revolting Librarians (1972) by Celeste West and Elizabeth Katz.
Another film we view is Party Girl (1995). Order and sound/noise are central features of the film. The figure of Melvil Dewey, whose portrait hangs in the library and whose classification scheme is frequently invoked as the driving force of library operations, is a constant theme in the story. We look at the writings of Dewey and the politics and social position of the WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) standpoint. We also discuss the fact that though the lore is that Dewey was responsible for the feminization of librarianship, this is not correct. There were female catalogers long before Dewey. In the early decades of the public library movement in the US, female catalogers working in libraries were well-educated women with knowledge of multiple languages, though they were always underpaid. We move from this into discussions of bias (including sexism and racism) in the Library of Congress Subject Headings and read works by Sanford Berman and Walter E. Olson. From the film, you get the idea that Dewey Decimal Classification is a utopian scheme, and we take a step back from that.
Lastly, we view the musical Music Man (1962). Out of the five films we view, Music Man engages the least with librarianship or librarians, but it does paint a picture of the female librarian before World War I. The readings we examine include works by Dee Garrison and Wayne Wiegand. Films provide a window into library history at a given point in time. They also allow us to see how people might view a particular time in history. Garrison’s view of women in early librarianship is that they were downtrodden. Other scholars we read, including GSLIS’s own Kate McDowell, argue that this is far from the case.
Information History (590IH)
Description: Information history covers diverse institutions and practices, from libraries and postal systems to cartography and statistics, and connects these to overarching historical processes. This course examines the role of information in the transition to capitalism, in processes of state formation, in industrialization, and in other important historical movements and events.
This course engages students by raising awareness of oppression. Early in the course, the week addressing imperialism is key. We discuss the rise of merchant capitalism and the exploitation of the East by the West. The themes from this narrative begin early and continue throughout the nineteenth century. We discuss the whole industry of mapping as an agent of capitalism that made merchant imperialism possible. We also discuss the telegraph and the “empire of cables” it generated. The work of Judith Karney and Richard Rosomoff highlights the notion of reverse imperialism in relation to the slave economy. African food, seeds, and plants were brought with the slaves on the voyage to America, along, of course, with the slaves’ knowledge regarding cultivation. Slave owners recognized that these crops were successful and worthy of cultivation and began to exploit them. This theme of the robbing of knowledge by the West runs throughout the course. For example, the British Museum in the nineteenth century serves as an example of one of the first “information societies” in the way it collected plundered knowledge and artifacts from around the globe—an expression of Britain’s desire to exert command and control over the rest of the world.
We spend a week on the rise of the state and how information is central to the rise of state power. One of the readings is from a book by Jacob Soll, The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Information Network (2011). This book tells the incredible story of the creation of an information machine for Louis XIV, built to slap down religious dissent. Colbert’s archive was used to protect the monarchy from religious dissidents in southern France, legal and other documents being mobilized to prove the righteousness of the establishment’s positions.
History and Foundations of LIS (590HF)
Description: This course introduces students to the historical foundations of library and information science and provides a basis for exploring more recent theoretical and experimental developments. It examines the complex interactions of socio-cultural, technological, and professional factors underlying the emergence and current status of LIS as a field of investigation and practice. It also suggests the relevance of historical study to fundamental and continuing problems of information management, despite the technological and organizational developments that have occurred over the centuries. The required reading is wide ranging but highly selected given the course’s scope. This course is required of all first semester PhD students.
Students cover some examples of information history and library history in 590HF. Last year I had a guest speaker from the University of Illinois Library, Marek Sroka, who spoke about Polish libraries under Stalin’s dictatorship. Amongst our readings is the work of Archie Dick, who discusses the “sanctuary” role of township libraries in South Africa during Apartheid.
Library Buildings and Society (590LP)
Description: This course is based on the premise that library buildings, like all technologies, are shaped by society and its needs, aspirations, and ideologies. It focuses on the public library in the United States and Britain since the middle of the nineteenth century; however, other library types, periods, and places will also be considered. This course is a complement to, not a substitute for, LIS 548, Library Buildings.
In 590LP, we engage with Cheryl Knott Malone’s research into the Houston Colored Carnegie Libraries. We also engage with Abigail van Slyck’s work on Carnegie library design, including her analysis regarding children’s libraries as places where women library workers were able to professionalize away from the circulation desk. Children’s libraries were also places where children sorted emancipation. In Britain children’s libraries began as mere shelters, designed to “rescue” youth from the barbarity and squalor of street life in urban, industrialized areas. Gradually, however, they became more attractive and inviting, reflecting what scholars have termed the “rediscovery of childhood.”