Updating my post on Michael Casey and Laura Savastinuk’s recent statement on Library 2.0. A blog I have just discovered, the Proletarian Librarian (adding another to The ‘X’ Librarian trend), has some comments on the Library 2.0 post as well.

An insightful addition to the discussion:

I’m all for finding out what our users want and how they want to get it. I’m also for attempting to guide our users towards quality materials and services and I’m afraid that often Library 2.0 chastises librarians who hold this belief.

I don’t think this chastising is unique to Library 2.0, but it does crop up in a lot of the rhetoric so-called progressive librarians make and have made against so-called conservative librarians. We’ve heard it before in the Reader’s Advisory movement of the 1980’s: who are we to say what reading is good and bad. And now, who are we to say what information outlets are good and bad. We should, as they argue, give them what they want.

I wrote a recent essay examining which is more democratic, the imperative of the library to inform and educate its citizenry, or to give them the materials they request, because they have paid for them. It is a difficult balance to walk–I don’t know if my essay came up with a sufficient answer. Will post it later.