3B: Reflections on Readings for Week #3

Samuel Green spends the majority of "Personal Relations Between Librarians and Readers", which was  published 140 years ago (!), describing a wide variety of ways librarians might help patrons investigate topics and answer questions. His suggestions range from ready reference to research consulting, and from an air of civic duty to flat-out paternalism and elitist moralizing (""The collections of books which make up the contents of the circulating departments of our libraries have been provided for the use of persons of differing degrees of refinement and moral susceptibility, and for those who occupy mental planes of various altitudes.")

At one point, he throws out the following example:

"A reservoir dam gives way. Citizens become suspicious that too little care is taking in making the repairs. You drop a line to the chairman of the proper committee of the city government to say that you have just received Humber's " Water Supply of Towns" from London. He calls for the work, and takes it home to study."

I love the suggestion that a librarian would be so on top of local committee actions that they would preemptively reach out to a city government member to help them get better information. But this kind of civic-minded librarianship is exactly how libraries in Flint played a vital role in helping citizens advocate for themselves and challenge the inadequate information coming from government officials over the last few years.

The Flint Public Library is at the center of a variety of citizen research and information efforts -- they help citizens learn where donated bottled water is to be distributed; provide a reputable source of information after local and state government bodies have been discredited by their inaction or coverup efforts throughout the water crisis; and FPL's director Kay Schwartz has been vocal and visible as exactly the kind of active citizen-librarian imagined in Green's essay (though much, much less paternalistic). And at the current stage of the crisis, the FPL is even collecting community stories and experiences of the water crisis.

I find this model of librarianship so exciting and admirable! What are other ways that libraries can provide an alternative to information sources that are revealed to be misleading or unreliable? How can libraries step in to help support the needs of the community when appropriate - and what are those limits? Thinking about the FPL's role in the community during the water crisis really powerfully illustrates how the library's choice of informations sources have vital consequences - if they had simply accepted governmental data without any additional context or space for citizens to contest it with their own research, they would not have been able to provide this kind of support within the community. It's really good stuff, I think!