Your Library: Hotbed of Subversion [1974]

Most radicals tend to take public and academic libraries more or less for granted: you go in, look in the card catalog for the book you want, discover they don’t have it; look for another and find that one in the catalog, then go to the shelf and (a) find it; (b) don’t find it because it’s checked out; (c) find out some fucker’s already ripped it off (not surprisingly, Steal This Book has been a popular “missing” title in the few libraries that bought it). The point of this article is that you don’t necessarily have to passively accept what the library does or doesn’t have or do. To a limited extent, and with a very limited amount of effort, your local library can be used as a radicalizing influence in your community. 

I work in a library in the county seat of a large Pennsylvania county. Our library serves as a “district center” for other libraries spread throughout the county. Our district is federated but many are “systems” with headquarters and branches. What this amounts to is that other district libraries call on our library (which accordingly gets more dough from the state) to provide them with books they don’t already have or plan to buy. Thus our library will borrow from yet another, larger source (like Penn State, Free Library of Philadelphia, etc.) or if the book is a relatively new title, we will buy it for our own collection and loan it to the requesting library, then it goes into our collection. 

For the past couple of years, I have been “requesting” hundreds of books, most of them political, which the library has been buying. Our library, unlike some, makes a policy of supplying people with what they need, and if we don’t already own it, we buy it or borrow it from a larger collection. With the amount of time it takes to process books it generally won’t be available from another library for six months to a year, so if I’m fast enough, the library buys the books I request instead of trying to borrow them. Consequently, I’d recommend that when you see books in a bookstore or advertised for sale that you’d like to see in your local library, copy down the titles and authors and request them next time you get to the library. Wait and see what action they take on the titles. 

If, like our library, they buy them, fine. If they’ve borrowed from another library, then at least you didn’t have to buy them. If they don’t buy them, then go in and ask the reference librarian why they have such a crummy-ass policy. Ask why one person should get to choose 1000 or 10,000 titles a year, and nobody else any. Ask them how they should expect any community support with attitudes like that (public libraries are financially dependent on public support.) You can even tell them (and actually do, if you care to) that you’re going to send a letter to the city council criticizing its selective policy. (So few letters are sent that where we are, individual letters, both positive and negative, have a seemingly larger-than-life effect.)

Getting a library to subscribe to magazines they don’t have is more difficult, but possible, and definitely worthwhile. Again seek out the reference librarian and ask if the library subscribes to the ones you want, and why not. If s/he gives you any grief about the political orientation of the magazines, go into the “fairness doctrine” and find the usual junk at the other end of the spectrum—National Review, Human Events, etc. Also get other people to ask about the same titles, and through repetition, the idea may sink in. 

Most libraries have a cart or set of shelves for new books – try keeping it loaded with new ideas rather than just new books. It’s more likely that these books will be checked out than put away in “their proper place”. This is one of the most important things — making people aware, even in this slight way, of the existence of these books. 

You can get ahold of adhesive stickers which say “This degrades and exploits women” (2c each, plus 10% postage, from Erewhon Books, P.O.B. 2827, Stn. A Edmonton, Alberta) and put them in books (don’t put them on the card-pocket page, they’ll take them out). Don’t be afraid of confronting the professional librarians — most of them don’t prefer to think of themselves as narrow-minded or reactionary. When they get together at conferences they like to pass resolutions against war, censorship, etc. and most, I’m sure, would consider themselves “liberal”. Besides, libraries are changing more rapidly now due to the large influx of young, relatively aware people entering the field, as an alternative to getting into a more oppressive occupation. 

Andrew Carnegie 

From Solidarity Newsletter (Philadelphia Solidarity) no.9/10 (late summer 1974)