This week’s Monday Muse is about the Darien Statements.
At the risk of stating the obvious, Libraries Interact’s Kathryn Greenhill is one of the authors of the Darien Statements. Libraries Interact has no official spokespeople, so it’s not for me or anyone else to say that we collectively endorse it or not, but it’s definitely met our criteria as a topical issue that’s worth discussing.
Rather than just asking for yays or nays about the Darien Statements, I’m interested in some different approaches.
The Darien Statements and the reaction to it in the blogosphere raises broader questions about the role of statements in the profession. After all, there are the Five Laws of Library Science by Ranganathan, as well as statements by bodies such as IFLA, ALIA and the ALA – to give just one sample from just three organisations. Do these statements make any difference for libraries or librarians? Does anyone have any anecdotes of examples? Or is it better to assess these statements by the degree to which they inspire us or provoke conversation?
Considering the critiques and rewrites of the Darien Statements, is it appropriate for something like this to be wikified?
Do any parts of the Darien Statements help explain why you do what you do as a librarian? Are there any parts of the Darien Statements which you find problematic or not really applicable to your own circumstances?
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April 21, 2009 at 11:23
The only library statements I knew about much at all, where the ALIA Statement on Public Library Services, the IFLA Statement on Libraries and Intellectual Freedom and of course, from uni, Ranganathans laws.
I can honestly say that apart from being glad that they are there and hoping that someone is paying attention to them (and seeing that mostly in practice here in Australia, someone is), that I haven’t paid much attention to them since.
I’m glad they exist and I think they are a good foundation for libraries. But once a foundation is established, you don’t think much about it again until something shifts it, if ever. And that’s what its like for me.
I was interested in the Darien statement, although I don’t agree with it all. But its a great example of taking the inspiration of some great minds and trying to put into words, something that is difficult to articulate. They have done pretty well and I have taken some stuff away from it, but its not going to suit everybody.
From a public librarian viewpoint, when a lot of what we do is related to recreational rather than informational needs, the goal of preserving the integrity of civilisation is just too pie in the sky for me.
However, I do agree with most of the rest of it and am more reassured that there is a place that brings it all together, for those who are not as focused on libraries, but who are stakeholders and have a say in our future.
Yes, I think that it should be wikified, so that it can continue to develop as a statement on libraries, because its not perfect (but what is) and although its great, its the voice of mainly three people (awesome as they are).
Its not going to impact me greatly, but I’m glad to know its there, another foundation stone on which to continue building libraries.
April 21, 2009 at 20:55
It is very easy to get overwhelmed by the busy-ness of our working day, and not set aside the time to think at a higher level, to plan, to evaluate, to explore, to reflect and especially to listen.
In a previous role, I was advised by a consultant that many of the staff were jaded and unmotivated because there was no inspiration coming from the senior levels of the library.
I think these two points illustrate the value of the Darien Statements – they provide an opportunity for us to step back, take a deep breath, and actually think about what being a librarian means to us, and how we see ourselves professionally and within our profession. They provide an inspiration, because even if we don’t agree with all the points (and I don’t) and we are disillusioned (which I’m not) then simply thinking about them enough to decide if we agree or not is re-grounding ourselves and that in itself can be inspirational.
I don’t think they need to be wikified (although someone will probably do that) because for me the value is in the process of considering and discussing them – I don’t think there is a value in trying to refine them and coming up with the ‘correct’ version – there will be a correct version for each of us and for each library, and they are likely to be all different.
Personally, my greatest concern is that when I read them, I heard a sense that the librarian is greater than the organisation and the community they serve – ‘culture’ of individualism. I may have misunderstood but that is what I saw. I don’t buy that. On the other hand, I know that sometimes an inspirational librarian can lead a library to make great strides and lead significant change by sticking their neck out as an individual and taking personal and professional risks. And sometimes that same action results in librarians looking foolish and getting laughed at – I guess that is the risk. I would rather take the other path of working with others to find a common path. This takes more patience and effort, but I believe is kinder, more sustainable and in the long run, more effective.
April 22, 2009 at 12:48
Michelle and Carolyn: Thank you very much for your thoughtful comments.
Carolyn, what you said about the Darien Statements being valuable because of their potential to inspire is similar to what I wrote yesterday in my own blog.
My single biggest misgiving about the Darien Statements lies in this sentence: “Individual libraries serve the mission of their parent institution or governing body, but the purpose of the Library overrides that mission when the two come into conflict.” I can see how this makes sense in the academic library context, but I can imagine that a lot of special libraries would be shut down by their parent institutions if they acted along these lines. The existence of special libraries is often very tenuous, and we are often more intermingled with other functions of our parent organisations – such as knowledge management, marketing, corporate or research & development. I guess it leads to this question: are the words in the Darien Statement descriptive or prescriptive? Are special libraries flawed to the extent that they don’t fit in with the Library that is described in the Darien Statements?
I put out the wiki question because the Darien Statements have received more way scrutiny, some of it ungenerous, than almost anything else I’ve seen published in the blogging medium. The Darien Statements do attempt to be universal statements about libraries and it’s understandable that people would like input into this. The creative commons license does allow adaptation, so there could be a constantly changing DS (Darient Statements) in a wiki – so long as the original is referenced, there could be a special library DS, a public library DS or a version with a totally different writing style. If this happened, it would be ironic in some ways, but it’s possible.
One thing I like about the Darien Statements is how they came about. The authors of the Darien Statements are not representing any library organisations, just themselves. Somebody might ask, what gives them the right to do this? What gives any blogger the right to say whatever we like about the profession? Who gave Ranganathan the right to do this in the print medium in the last century? It’s a similar thing.