INFORMATION FREEDOM—OR IS IT?

“The core value of librarianship is the intersection of literacy (particularly early literacy) and intellectual freedom,” Jamie LaRue, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, reminds us. “But there are two great threats to modern librarianship. The first is a concerted and persistent attempt to unravel the public sector. The conservative tax revolt, the rise of anti-tax libertarianism, has eroded support for all tax-supported public institutions.”

The Advocacy Bootcamps, the recent joint initiative of the ALA’s Office for Library Advocacy and Office for Intellectual Freedom, is an attempt to be more proactive, as LaRue says, to use the latest library and brain research to try to shift the culture, to create a climate of library support. LaRue feels past messaging has been too diffuse and too focused on services. “We need to help build a new, deeper appreciation of civic engagement and civic investment.”

University of Minnesota’s Matthew Motta, a doctoral candidate with the Center for the Study of Political Psychology, explains that these issues didn’t start with Trump but rather reflect a development that is far more problematic: “[P]eople have become less likely to seek out diverse sources of information about politics and other matters. We life in a somewhat paradoxical time. People have more access to information than ever before. But, it’s also easier to ignore in formation that challenges our political preferences and to selectively find information that supports those views.”

In Motta’s view, the 21st century might be become known as the Selective Information Age. “The smartphone revolution has made it possible to conjure up information on just about any subject in a matter of seconds. This, on its own, isn’t a bad thing. “The problem,” he says, “is that people are what psychologists call ‘motivated reasonsers.’ People naturally tend to arrive at conclusions first, and come up with information to justify them later—think first, rationalize later—rather than survey all available evidence and make an informed decision. People often tend to do precisely the opposite.”

While increased access to information can have potentially harmful side effects for democracy, Motta warns that limiting access to information is not the answer. “I see increased access to information as a good thing, but think that we can do better to incentivize and train people to make more accurate judgments about politics and other matters.”

A BATTLE WORTH THE FIGHT

Tobolowsky sees no easy answers. “I can imagine so many scenarios for the future. Some authors suggest the election of Trump is a response to Obama’s presidency. Others add this may just be an aberration. We’ll know in time.” She does agree that the anti-intellectual messages seem to have increased over time. “As an academic, I find the public’s disregard of scholarly activity, at the very least, disheartening and, at the worse, frightening. All Tobolowsky knows is that “we are in the midst of a battle, which is worth the fight. I think we need to fight any impulse to go inward and hope for a better tomorrow. Rather,” she advises, “we need to do more outreach with the public, so they see the value in our work.”

In his recent book, Information and Society (MIT Press, 2017), longtime Berkeley iSchool professor Michael Buckland clearly presents the “the rising flood of data, documents, and records, … outlines the dramatic long-term growth of documents, … and notes the rise of techniques” to cope with them.

In the book, Buckland outlines good professional practice:

What else are libraries for if not to provide access to the record of the past. If the requirements for fact-checking could be clarified, then libraries could move to instigate, promote, facilitate, provide what is needed—and in moving to do that would constitute healthy adaptation by libraries to changed services. Future funding is going to depend on the extent to which library services are appreciated.

In this age of information, misinformation, and hyperinformation, the role of information professionals is more important than ever before. However, in seeking to re-establish our position in the information system, we can be sure that we face a bumpy ride. Time to fasten our seatbelts.