PLG - Why We Keep On Going

Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 16:31:37 -0500
To: plgnet-l@hera.sjsu.edu
From: mark rosenzweig
Subject: PLG: 

The Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG): Why we keep on going.

The Progressive Librarians Guild has become a different sort of enterprise
than its founders originally envisioned. Visions of a national
organization with chapters and by-laws and so on seem to have peeled away.
Any student of history or the sociology of organizations should not be
surprised about the unintended consequences of efforts at organizing for
change. In organizing for change, you are changed too. However, this is
not necessarily a bad thing.

PLG has, for one reason or another, remained SO unstructured  that, while
it did not maintain its original identity in pristine form, it has
persisted and become something else, something serving important purposes.
It continues as a coherent current of opinion, as a vehicle for activity,
and as a rallying point at different times for different causes. Its
convocation seven years ago effectively revitalized an increasingly feeble
library radicalism which had begun, even in SRRT, to lose its impetus. It
has also become, to use the over-used phrase-of-the-moment, a "network"
and even if this organizational form is transitional to something else, it
happens to be what we have at the moment and we can probably use it more
effectively if we recognize it as such.

PLG, as it was originally conceived, is still today both inside and outside
of the "official" library organizations, in particular, ALA. As an affiliate
of SRRT we represent the view that SRRT as a whole needs a global
vision of social librarianship and cultural democracy and that SRRT cannot
be effective as just the sum of task force activities. We are the
(self-styled) "left-wing" of SRRT, whose explicit  identity as such allows
SRRT to be the umbrella group that it is, that it should be, representing
an actual spectrum of liberal to far-left options. Within ALA, PLG members
have been outspokenly in favor of more concerted action to restore
organizational democracy, get "progressive" councilors elected AND to get
them to work in concert as a coalition against the dominant consensus
within Council and the ALA executive. We have recently begun organizing a
Progressive Caucus in ALA Council/Membership for action within Council in
advancing a social responsibilities agenda.

Outside of Librarydom's official national organization, PLG leads an
elusive, but perhaps equally important, existence as a program and an
identity for librarians all over the country who are NOT involved in ALA,
allowing us to feel that we are part of a community of radical librarians,
that we are not alone, that we are linked through each other's individual
activities to each other and to the various social movements and
struggles. This aspect of PLG can now be enhanced by the existence and use
of PLGNET, our listserv. By the time this is published in the SRRT
Newsletter, PLG will have its own website up and running.

Our journal, Progressive Librarian has just published  a double issue
12/13 (Spring/Summer 1997). Over the last seven years we have published
articles representing both attempts to develop a critical librarianship
and materials meant as interventions on particular issues with
implications for libraries, librarians and librarianship. Through the
journal we have sought to encourage a librarianship which reaches out to
connect with developments in radical pedagogy, critical communications
theory, the political economy of information, and other related fields of
activity in which countercurrents to the orthodoxies of the status quo are
raising important questions about culture and society. The present
editors, Henry Blanke, John Buschman, Elaine Harger and myself, want to
take this opportunity to urge all SRRT members to consider sending us
articles they think would be of interest to readers of Progressive
Librarian. We urge SRRT members too to subscribe to PL. to make sure their
subscription is current, and to try to get their institutions to
subscribe. The journal has not been bankrolled by SRRT, so subscriptions
and membership dues are extremely important for us to keep the journal
going.

What then is PLG today? It is a network of librarians and groups and
institutions sharing a common commitment to radical librarianship,
promoting solidarity and communicating vital information about activities
and issues as they emerge. It is the publisher of Progressive Librarian, a
journal which represents a unique "left" perspective on library issues
viewed in a broad political and cultural context. It is  an affiliate of
SRRT which continues to put on programs at ALA promoting a critical
discourse on library issues. It is the instigator of the new Progressive
Caucus in ALA.

Let me close by urging all SRRTers to consider joining PLG, subscribing to
our journal, participating in our panels and publications and suggesting
themes for new ones. Yes, we know the waves of activism in librarianship
have ebbed and flowed, but PLG is alive and well. You can help make it an
effective voice for the library Left.

Mark Rosenzweig
SRRT  Action Council
ALA councilor at large
Progressive Librarians Guild

providing a forum for the open exchange of radical views on library issues

PLG - Why We Keep On Going
