The public library as a meeting-place in a multicultural and digital context... by Ragnar Audunson/ Review and Critique -- J. Colannino

I had not been acquainted with Dr. Audunson until now. According to his biography, he is a political scientist in the Library and Information Science Department at Oslo University College, Norway. The subject writing concerns the political and social roles of the library in democracy and proposes that libraries serve as an important meeting place for patrons to share and exchange culture.

Synopsis
Dr. Audunson asserts that democratic institutions require tolerance and diversity to function, or as he puts it “The cement of democracy is tolerance.” Accordingly, society must create “arenas where people belonging to different cultural groups can meet and communicate,” and these arenas should be low-intensive places. I did not find the concept well-defined in the text, except perhaps by contrast to high-intensive places, where: “You can communicate intensively with persons sharing your interests and values… and you don’t have to bother with those disturbing persons holding opposite values and views.” With such a definition, low-intensive places are mono-cultural ones and high-intensive places are multicultural ones, though perhaps the intensity of debate among seminal issues is meant to be the distinguishing feature. The author uses “place” both literally and metonymically (for example, the church choir is a low-intensive “place”). In his view, the library is the best low-intensive place to share rival philosophies, and “For the future of democracy this is a question of utmost importance.”

Finally, Audunson appears to endorse the opinion that “No teacher or librarian should try to tell people how they should live their lives…. the role of the library is to promote self-realisation… not to make judgments and selections.”

My View
So what do I think? I find Audunson’s arguments unconvincing. First of all, the construct that libraries should not behave normatively is self-destructive – it is a normative pronouncement that no normative pronouncements should be made. Yet his text is full of normative statements, things that libraries should and should not do, ways that democracies should and should not behave, actions that people should and should not take, how societies should and should not function. If librarians should not “tell people how to live their lives,” why should I listen to Audunson?

Second, Audunson does not support his pronouncements with data, and his assertions are easily disproved: we share ideas in many places, not merely low-intensive ones. Here are some counter-examples: political debates are high-intensive places where we are exposed to alien ideas. So are religious revival meetings. The university classroom can be a high-intensive place. And what of blogs and chatrooms?

It is even true that democracy can exist without diversity or tolerance; there is nothing in a pure democracy that even requires them. Even today, Japan is mono-cultural yet democratic. Singapore is politically intolerant, yet democratic. In the U.S., slavery was democratically enacted, maintained, and overturned. Democracy only means the majority supports an idea, whether good or bad. As such, democracy does not safeguard our freedoms, nor does diversity. Even tolerance can be oppressive if evil is its beneficiary. For these reasons, we need normative standards, the very kind Audunson seems to disapprove.

Finally, Audunson seems to hold to a (long-discredited) utopian concept of society where the mere provision of place creates harmony. If he were correct, Sunday would not be the most segregated day of the week, nor would the lunch room be the most segregated place on the high school campus.

The library is designed to collect information from authorities and disseminate it to patrons, but that is a one-way street. It is not well-suited as a marketplace of ideas among its congregants. How could a place that demands its patrons not speak to one another even be nominated for that function? Are libraries so unimportant in their own right that we need to feign that the fate of the free world is wrapped in their mantle? Must we invent new and nonsensical functions for them? Until libraries learn how to forcefully base their droit d'être (right to exist) on their raison d’etre they shall continue to decline in relevance.