There is an economic consequence of Libraries neglecting certain (majority) demographics for ideological reasons: If Libraries do not serve the larger community then they should expect a taxpayer revolt and funding cuts - especially when so many struggle to put food on the table and gas in their car (to get to work).
If Libraries stop serving their loyal users (e.g. senior citizens) they will have few allies when the revolt happens. Ironically, the groups they want to include have already switched to smart phones. They are abandoning proven allies for fickle users - which makes little sense.
I'm not sure who are the most typical or loyal users, actually, at least by age. Libraries supply a lot of digital items through, e.g., Hoopla Digitial or Libby/Overdrive (good for those cellphone users) and they may put on programs for children, and consequently parents, who may be young.
Many public libraries have already alienated a large portion of their library-using communities, for sure, and they may very well pay for that with loss of funding. I think some have. But again, it's not so simple. In MA, the MBLC (Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners has the power of the purse to a considerable extent. Consequently, it can effect local decisions about funding and about the catalogue.
But we do agree that Senior Citizens are examples of loyal users of public libraries, right? Alienating any part of the user base is unwise when public libraries are scrambling for relevance in the era of the internet. It is especially unwise to alienate one of the strongest voting blocks in the democracy.
Unless the MBLC has a secret gold mine, voters have the ultimate power over the purse. As I said: If Libraries do not serve the larger community then they should expect a taxpayer revolt and funding cuts. (BTW: This is generally true for any government service)
I literally do not know who are the biggest users of library services. But I think that voters do not actually have so much power as you imagine. They elect representatives, and library issues are not generally top of their minds in the voting booth. What is is not clear, probably advertising. Locally there was a contentious election, and the rootless person with the class loyalties beat the actually local person who works hard for the residents of his neighborhood by a 2-1 margin. So it goes.
Whereas it is true that single issue voters who oppose woke libraries that serve their political agenda more than they serve the community are rare, voters who oppose woke policies in general are not. We can see plenty of examples of these voters in PTA's and School Board Meetings across the country trying to make their schools serve their community as they see it.
Some say the future of Libraries is to change from lending books to providing communal spaces for reading and consuming media. In fact, a pew survey of library usage indicates that is already the trend. That may save the building plus some of the jobs while reducing operating costs but without book collections they aren't real libraries.
Budgets are tightening everywhere. To avoid becoming meeting rooms without books, Libraries need broad support from a strong user base. Politicizing their services alienates some of their base and weakens support.
There will be fewer of those old people every year.
I can not argue with the statement that when libraries politicize their services they alienate members of their community and their patrons. I watch it happen and, to a certain extent, it has happened to me. I'm not the trusting person I used to be, every library decision seems sinister.
For example, my local public library is swapping their fiction and non-fiction collections in their children's department. Picture books get to stay where they are, I think. The reason is that their fiction holdings are expanding, and there has been a corresponding contraction in their non-fiction. The expectation is that the uses that many of the books were put to can be satisfied via electronic resources (I guess this is the "looking" up that I remember being forced to do in middle school). That in itself is not so terrible; in the past there were a lot of series that were published for school libraries mostly just so things could be looked up in them and the items in the series weren't books that you would actually want to read. "But what else are they up to?", I immediately ask myself. 'What is the agenda?" I don't know, but I am suspicious. In years past I would have been unconcerned, assuming both good intent and competence.
Before the 1850s, only a few elite scholars and subscribers could access original materials in exclusive archives, keeping important information away from regular people. When public libraries started to grow in the mid-19th century, they still did not offer this access to everyone; instead, they were used to manage behavior and society. As a result, everyday citizens have never had a system that gives them unfiltered access to the entire historical and intellectual record.
Today, government and activist actions still limit this access by censoring collections and promoting 'approved narratives', which goes against Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By not allowing the public to see unfiltered primary sources—a privilege once held by elites—important knowledge remains hidden behind institutional barriers, stopping true intellectual freedom.
Traditional cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal classification made the full range of human knowledge clear, allowing patrons to see the complete structure of available information, even if a specific title was missing.
The old Dewey system made it obvious when a book was missing because every subject had a permanent spot on the shelf and in the catalog, so anyone could look and see a clear gap where a title used to be. Modern ideological weeding erases books completely from the system without a trace, meaning you cannot see what was taken away or even know that it ever existed.
Modern DEI-driven curation frameworks replace this openness with ideological censorship "weeding' and selective acquisition to remove books based on changing political criteria. Unlike traditional oversight or clear censorship, this systematic removal leaves no trace, erasing the visible record of what has been taken away and denying everyday citizens the unedited access to primary sources that was once reserved for elites.
And it's interesting to note the amount of Liberians that were killed in revolutionary Russia. When the Bolsheviks seized power, they immediately recognized libraries as vital instruments for ideological control and began systematically purging collections, banning classic philosophy, and arresting or executing intellectuals and information workers who resisted state curation. Librarians and archivists who attempted to preserve independent catalogs or protect unedited source material faced imprisonment, exile, or death as the state transformed every repository into an organ of party propaganda. True freedom of information requires that libraries remain entirely open, transparent, and completely free from political interference.
Soviet libraries maintained a hidden, restricted-access section called the spetskhran that operated entirely apart from the public catalog. This secret collection held banned philosophy, banned political texts, and unedited foreign literature stripped from public shelves. Access required special state security clearance or explicit authorization from political authorities. This setup created a two-tiered reality where ordinary citizens were fed sanitized state propaganda while political elites and trusted apparatchiks retained private access to the real historical and intellectual record.
If we want to stay free. Our libraries have to stay free. Maintaining that freedom requires protecting public libraries as completely transparent, unmonitored spaces where the entire record of human thought remains visible to everyone, ensuring that access to unedited information is never again locked away or silently erased. 'Inclusion' is the last thing that they want.
Just as a stylistic note, I loathe the word "meritocracy". It was invented by a little known author for his satirical novel "The Rise of the Meritocracy" and he carefully assembled the word so that it would have obvious defects, like a malleable meaning and a mix of Latin and Greek roots. He wanted it to be obviously a bogus word meant for politicians and such. It is pretty wild that it is had gotten into common usage. One day, when a person declares that it is a "brave new world" only 1 person in 100 will suspect that the person is speaking ironically, and then soon it will be zero. "meritocracy" has gone that road a bit faster, that is all.
There is an economic consequence of Libraries neglecting certain (majority) demographics for ideological reasons: If Libraries do not serve the larger community then they should expect a taxpayer revolt and funding cuts - especially when so many struggle to put food on the table and gas in their car (to get to work).
If Libraries stop serving their loyal users (e.g. senior citizens) they will have few allies when the revolt happens. Ironically, the groups they want to include have already switched to smart phones. They are abandoning proven allies for fickle users - which makes little sense.
I'm not sure who are the most typical or loyal users, actually, at least by age. Libraries supply a lot of digital items through, e.g., Hoopla Digitial or Libby/Overdrive (good for those cellphone users) and they may put on programs for children, and consequently parents, who may be young.
Many public libraries have already alienated a large portion of their library-using communities, for sure, and they may very well pay for that with loss of funding. I think some have. But again, it's not so simple. In MA, the MBLC (Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners has the power of the purse to a considerable extent. Consequently, it can effect local decisions about funding and about the catalogue.
But we do agree that Senior Citizens are examples of loyal users of public libraries, right? Alienating any part of the user base is unwise when public libraries are scrambling for relevance in the era of the internet. It is especially unwise to alienate one of the strongest voting blocks in the democracy.
Unless the MBLC has a secret gold mine, voters have the ultimate power over the purse. As I said: If Libraries do not serve the larger community then they should expect a taxpayer revolt and funding cuts. (BTW: This is generally true for any government service)
I literally do not know who are the biggest users of library services. But I think that voters do not actually have so much power as you imagine. They elect representatives, and library issues are not generally top of their minds in the voting booth. What is is not clear, probably advertising. Locally there was a contentious election, and the rootless person with the class loyalties beat the actually local person who works hard for the residents of his neighborhood by a 2-1 margin. So it goes.
Whereas it is true that single issue voters who oppose woke libraries that serve their political agenda more than they serve the community are rare, voters who oppose woke policies in general are not. We can see plenty of examples of these voters in PTA's and School Board Meetings across the country trying to make their schools serve their community as they see it.
Some say the future of Libraries is to change from lending books to providing communal spaces for reading and consuming media. In fact, a pew survey of library usage indicates that is already the trend. That may save the building plus some of the jobs while reducing operating costs but without book collections they aren't real libraries.
Budgets are tightening everywhere. To avoid becoming meeting rooms without books, Libraries need broad support from a strong user base. Politicizing their services alienates some of their base and weakens support.
There will be fewer of those old people every year.
I can not argue with the statement that when libraries politicize their services they alienate members of their community and their patrons. I watch it happen and, to a certain extent, it has happened to me. I'm not the trusting person I used to be, every library decision seems sinister.
For example, my local public library is swapping their fiction and non-fiction collections in their children's department. Picture books get to stay where they are, I think. The reason is that their fiction holdings are expanding, and there has been a corresponding contraction in their non-fiction. The expectation is that the uses that many of the books were put to can be satisfied via electronic resources (I guess this is the "looking" up that I remember being forced to do in middle school). That in itself is not so terrible; in the past there were a lot of series that were published for school libraries mostly just so things could be looked up in them and the items in the series weren't books that you would actually want to read. "But what else are they up to?", I immediately ask myself. 'What is the agenda?" I don't know, but I am suspicious. In years past I would have been unconcerned, assuming both good intent and competence.
Some interesting points, indeed!
Before the 1850s, only a few elite scholars and subscribers could access original materials in exclusive archives, keeping important information away from regular people. When public libraries started to grow in the mid-19th century, they still did not offer this access to everyone; instead, they were used to manage behavior and society. As a result, everyday citizens have never had a system that gives them unfiltered access to the entire historical and intellectual record.
Today, government and activist actions still limit this access by censoring collections and promoting 'approved narratives', which goes against Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By not allowing the public to see unfiltered primary sources—a privilege once held by elites—important knowledge remains hidden behind institutional barriers, stopping true intellectual freedom.
Traditional cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal classification made the full range of human knowledge clear, allowing patrons to see the complete structure of available information, even if a specific title was missing.
The old Dewey system made it obvious when a book was missing because every subject had a permanent spot on the shelf and in the catalog, so anyone could look and see a clear gap where a title used to be. Modern ideological weeding erases books completely from the system without a trace, meaning you cannot see what was taken away or even know that it ever existed.
Modern DEI-driven curation frameworks replace this openness with ideological censorship "weeding' and selective acquisition to remove books based on changing political criteria. Unlike traditional oversight or clear censorship, this systematic removal leaves no trace, erasing the visible record of what has been taken away and denying everyday citizens the unedited access to primary sources that was once reserved for elites.
And it's interesting to note the amount of Liberians that were killed in revolutionary Russia. When the Bolsheviks seized power, they immediately recognized libraries as vital instruments for ideological control and began systematically purging collections, banning classic philosophy, and arresting or executing intellectuals and information workers who resisted state curation. Librarians and archivists who attempted to preserve independent catalogs or protect unedited source material faced imprisonment, exile, or death as the state transformed every repository into an organ of party propaganda. True freedom of information requires that libraries remain entirely open, transparent, and completely free from political interference.
Soviet libraries maintained a hidden, restricted-access section called the spetskhran that operated entirely apart from the public catalog. This secret collection held banned philosophy, banned political texts, and unedited foreign literature stripped from public shelves. Access required special state security clearance or explicit authorization from political authorities. This setup created a two-tiered reality where ordinary citizens were fed sanitized state propaganda while political elites and trusted apparatchiks retained private access to the real historical and intellectual record.
If we want to stay free. Our libraries have to stay free. Maintaining that freedom requires protecting public libraries as completely transparent, unmonitored spaces where the entire record of human thought remains visible to everyone, ensuring that access to unedited information is never again locked away or silently erased. 'Inclusion' is the last thing that they want.
Just as a stylistic note, I loathe the word "meritocracy". It was invented by a little known author for his satirical novel "The Rise of the Meritocracy" and he carefully assembled the word so that it would have obvious defects, like a malleable meaning and a mix of Latin and Greek roots. He wanted it to be obviously a bogus word meant for politicians and such. It is pretty wild that it is had gotten into common usage. One day, when a person declares that it is a "brave new world" only 1 person in 100 will suspect that the person is speaking ironically, and then soon it will be zero. "meritocracy" has gone that road a bit faster, that is all.