Library Juice 8:1 - January 14, 2005
Contents:
1. Links...
2. Al Magary's thoughts on "Googlebrary"
3. Response to Ed D'Angelo on "Anarchist Librarianship"
4. Note on 1913 ALA Annual Conference in The Dial
5. Noel Peattie, librarian and poet, has passed away
Quote for the week:
"Unlike print, electronic data accords its producer the means to retain and
protect exclusive ownership rights. No longer are publishers confined to
packaging data and selling it outright to libraries and other customers to
use in perpetuity. They can treat electronic information like rental
property, subdividing and leasing it to their customers on terms carefully
delimited by contract.... In an era when government vacillates in meeting
its obligation to secure the public's information rights, libraries may be
the only civic agency positioned to defend the community's stake in equal
access. If we accept this essentially democratic trust, it follows that
our role is to bridge, rather than widen, economic gaps in the information
chain, thereby reasserting the social and political value of information
that some would renounce."John Haar, "The politics of information: A reassessment." In Critical
Approaches to Information Technology in Librarianship, John Buschman
(Editor). (Greenwood, 1993). Quoted in Theodore Roszak's The Cult of
Information, 2nd ed. (University of California Press, 1994)
Homepage of the week: Liberty Smith
http://home.southernct.edu/~smithl14/main/_________________________________________________________________________top
1. Links...
-----
New on Libr.org
Information for Social Change No. 20, Winter 2004/2005
'Library Documentation, Libraries and the Working Class, Anti-Semitism,
Knowledge and Social Change'-----
U.S. Libraries and the "War on Terrorism"
Mark Hudson
New Politics 37
http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue37/Hudson37.htm[ found surfing ]
-----
Internet Archive to build alternative to Google
Information World Review, 12/21/2004
http://www.iwr.co.uk/IWR/1160176
[ sent by Mark Gooch to COLLIB-L ]Internet Archive Press Release on this:
http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=25361
[ sent by Bernie Sloan to the COLLIB-L list ]-----
Paranoid or Prescient? Daniel Brandt is concerned about Google Print
http://www.isedb.com/news/article/1087[ Don Wood to IFACTION ]
-----
An RFID question and answer was added to Questions and Answers on
Privacy and Confidentiality.http://www.ala.org/oif/policies/interpretations/privacyqanda
[ Don Wood to IFACTION ]
-----
Why Wikipedia must jettison anti-elitism
By lsanger
Kuro5hin, Dec. 31, 2005
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25[ Bernie Sloan to COLLIB-L ]
-----
100 Free Money Sources for Libraries
By Matthew Lesko and Mary Ann Martello
http://www.lesko.com/libraries/Matthew Lesko on Libraries
http://www.lesko.com/OnLibraries.html[ sent to me by Lisa Votino, Maranwe Communications ]
-----
Black Studies resource page, City College of New York
http://origin.admin.ccny.cuny.edu/library/blacks.html[ from Grace-Ellen McCrann to the RUSA list ]
-----
New URL for Chuck Munson's Anarchist Librarians Web:
http://www.infoshop.org/alibrarians/public_html/index.php[ Sent to the anarchist librarians list by Chuck Munson ]
-----
From the Organic Consumers Association.
Dear Friend,
A well-respected and popular professor at the
University of California in Berkeley has been fired
after publishing a scientific paper regarding the
uncontrolled contamination of irreplaceable native
Mexican corn varieties by genetically engineered corn.Dr. Ignacio Chapela, whose corn contamination article
was published in the science journal "Nature," was
denied his tenure due to pressure from the biotech
company Monsanto on the University (the UC Berkeley
tenure review panel had actually voted almost
unanimously to approve his tenure). Professor Chapela
has been told to have his office cleaned out by
December 31.Sign a petition to demand a review of Dr. Chapela's
tenure denial.
Sign here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/uc.htm-----
"We're Creative Commonists, Bill"
(Bill Gates and copyright reformers)
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66209,00.html[ from Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza to his lib-info-society list ]
-----
Librarian's Faith Is Renewed
An L.A. County employee wins a national award for excellence after a feisty
patron nominated him for the honor.
By Zeke Minaya
Times Staff Writer
January 11, 2005
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-library11jan11,1,6558243.story?ctrack=1&cset=true[ Dana Lubow to the PLG and SRRT lists ]
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2. Al Magary's thoughts on "Googlebrary"
subscribe; comments about "Googlebrary"
Date: 12/21/04 06:54 pm
From: Al Magary <al[at]magary.com>
To: Juice-subscriptions[at]libr.org
Reply to: al[at]magary.comHi, I read your good analysis of the Googlebrary project (it was
forwarded to the Yahoo group Net-Gold) and want to keep up with news of
the project. What listservs or blogs are particularly focusing on the
various issues connected with digital libraries or even especially
Google Print?I'm an independent researcher about halfway through a project for a new
edition of Hall's Chronicle (1550), one of the chronicles that
Shakespeare based his history plays on. I depend a great deal on the
Internet and am grateful for the free archives such as Project
Gutenberg, UVa, UToronto, Berkeley, etc. But I usually find I am locked
out of commercial electronic resources even where I have a reader's
card (like San Francisco State Univ.), and some commercial databases
(like the Chadwyck-Healey/ProQuest EEBO) don't have individual
subscription plans. But my local public, SFPL, has remote access to a
few scholarly resources--JSTOR and OED2 are ones I use all the time--and
I am glad that the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has a
monthly subscription fee that's bearable.My concerns about Googlebrary center are two-fold (partially
"double-fold"!):--Quality of Google's scanning: The integrity of the scanned text is
essential for Google's index to have integrity, otherwise the old
computer term GIGO applies. Right now, at sites like the University of
Toronto's Books Online site
(http://link.library.utoronto.ca/booksonline/) you can either browse
page facsimiles or search--the search being conducted on scanned text,
search results (in pull-down lists) taking you to the page facsimiles.
However, if you change the view from Image to Text, you see the OCR text
on which the search engine works, the etext being topped with this
warning: "Source of transcriptions: Text transcriptions are produced
using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). They do not reflect the
layout of the original page, and may contain errors." And, yes, you see
scanning errors immediately, and can lose faith in the search results.A particularly egregious set of bad etexts is at the 11,000-volume
Michigan/Cornell Making of America
(http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/). It's wonderful to see page
facsimiles of Shakespeare; it's not so wonderful to realize that your
search may be based on Henry IV, Part 1 being hashed like this:"That's even as fair as-at hand, quoth the then we leak in the chimney;
and your chamber-lie chamberlain; for thou variest no more from picking
of breeds fleas like a loach. purses, than giving direction doth from
labouring; thou 1 Car. What, ostler! come away and be hanged; lay'st the
plot how. come away. Enter Chamberlain. 2 Car. I have a gammon of bacon,
and two razes3 Cham. Good morrow, master Gadshill. It holds of ginger,
to be delivered as far as Charing-cross. current, that I told you
yesternight: there's a franklin 1 Car.'Odsbody! the turkeys in my
pannier are in the wild of Kent, hath brought three hundred marks quite
starved.-What, ostler!-A plague on thee! hast with him in gold: I heard
him tell it to one of his 1 Folio: for I. 2 Measure. 3 Roots. 4 A
proverb of the time." (John Payne Collier, ed., The Works of
Shakespeare: TheText Regulated by the Recently Discovered Folio... [New
York, 1853]; at http://tinyurl.com/2etz3).Now, Google seems to be using the very latest scanning equipment but so
far we have seen none of the results. What's more, it would appear that
except for those entitled to use the Stanford, Michigan, Harvard, and
Bodleian libraries, and for NYPL users for their own scanned public
domain books, we won't see the quality of the etext on which Google will
be doing its indexing.These concerns can be summed up in the cheery, "Welcome to the
randomly-available intellectual works of the world as it was before
1923. You never can tell what you're going to find among the cobwebs."The other concerns, such as "disbinding" or hasty handling of rare
books, or the risky business of keeping digital content readable in
decades and centuries to come, seem minor to me.Cheers,
Al Magary
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3. Response to Ed D'Angelo on "Anarchist Librarianship"
In issue 7:25 of Library Juice I published an essay I wrote challenging the
idea of "anarchist librarianship," and invited Ed D'Angelo, an anarchist
and a librarian whom I respect as a thinker and a writer, to respond. He
did, and I published his response in the last issue, 7:27.Here are the links to those two articles:
A critique of "anarchist librarianship"
http://libr.org/Juice/issues/vol7/LJ_7.25.html#7Ed D'Angelo's response to "A Critique of 'Anarchist Librarianship'"
http://www.libr.org/Juice/issues/vol7/LJ_7.27.html#4To begin my response to Ed's article, I would like to share a little bit of
personal background regarding my interest in anarchism. As I mentioned
originally, while I was still in library school I became friends with a
number of self-described anarchist librarians and became interest in their
thinking. I didn't mention the attraction that their anarchist beliefs
held for me as I began to explore them. I attended four or five anarchist
bookfairs in San Francisco, read some anarchist philosophy, listened to
speakers, and hung out with enough anarchists that strangers began to
presume that I was one. As a result of my experience during that time I
am aware of the wide range of anarchist philosophical positions, existing
now and in history, and I came to believe in the overall importance of the
principles to which anarchists are singularly devoted, as elements of a
socialist politics. Ed was correct to begin his response to me by
emphasizing our commons aims and commitments (though he got some of mine
wrong). By extending our differences to logical conclusions, our debate
can make our differences appear larger than they are. Despite that I
think it is productive to explore them.In gradually moving away from anarchism as a political philosophy I didn't
exactly reject the principles on which it is based so much as I chose to
admit other principles into the mix; that is, I decided that it was
unrealistic to base my entire political outlook on a simple set of
principles that provided black-and-white judgments (about people and
relationships between them, and about societies, social structures and
organizations). Yes, individual autonomy is extremely important, of
course, and yes, it shouldn't be compromised unnecessarily, as it often
is. But, in any good society, as we collectively decide what our rights
are we determine corresponding limitations to our liberties. (The other
side of a right is an obligation). This was as true in the Mohawk Nation
as it is in the United States (albeit less formally) so I would not
presume that Ed would disagree with it (though many other anarchists
might). Judging from what Ed wrote in the last issue, I can assume that
he simply would stress that only non-coercive means are permissible in
maintaining such a social order, and the first dedication must be to the
right means, with faith that harmonious ends will be both possible and
ultimately realized. While I still share with Ed the high valuation of
the rights of individuals to live free from coercion and believe that
respect for those rights has to be a part of any good society, I
eventually discarded the anarchist's absolutist emphasis on that principle
and instead put it in balance with the interests of society as a whole. I
decided that I could not believe in a political philosophy that is based
entirely on faith and uses as its standard the abstract ideal of a kind of
heaven-on-earth, without a discernible path to its realization.But again, because Ed admitted large-scale, even hierarchical organization
as potentially "okay," I sense that his position may not be so far off
from mine, though mine is rather clearly the less absolute. An article
that I would take as supporting the necessity of structured organization
for practical purposes, as opposed to what I would interpret as a more
anarchist ideal, is the 1970 essay by radical feminist Jo Freeman, "On the
tyranny of structurelessness." I'd like to recommend this article to
anyone who finds this debate interesting:
[ http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html ].
(I am aware that I have linked to a copy of the article that is sitting on
an anarchist server, which indicates that it has been brought into
anarchist discourse.) The point Freeman makes is that political
organizations (or any organizations) that want to do more than discuss
things need to be organized with a structure in order to be effective, and
that structure includes authority based primarily on organizational role
rather than personality or special knowledge, and that a formal structure
is necessary in order for the organization to be democratic rather than
controlled by an informal elite.Some of the same insights in this essay were a part of my reasoning as I
moved away from anarchism, yet I recognize that some (though probably
relatively few) anarchists might agree with it. But it seems to me that
an anarchist who accepts the idea that structured organization is
necessary to get things done, and large-scale organization is necessary to
get big things done, would simply not admit that the possibility of
hearing "you are not in the organization anymore" constitutes a form of
coercion. Whether it is "coercion" or not might be a matter of semantics,
but it seems to be the point on which my real disagreement with Ed hinges.
Coercive or not, it is the possibility of being pushed out of an
organization (whether it's a job, a profession, or a committee) - and not
the threat of violence from the state - that is the primary way in which
order is maintained in the many layers of organization that create and
support the infrastructural standards on which modern librarianship is
based. I am NOT saying that the fear of losing ones position is a good
thing, and in many situations it clearly leads to the suppression of truth
in organizations (especially in capitalist society, where the threat of
losing ones position can be the threat of unemployment, making it a bigger
stick), but in practical terms it does make possible - in the real world
and not merely in a hypothetical one - cooperative efforts that require
many people to act in concert, sometimes on a large scale. I realize that
that is an unradical, unexciting, unrevolutionary thing to say, but I
think it is realistic. (I also should point out to anarchists that merely
recognizing a role for authority and not taking a radically
anti-authoritarian position does not make one an authoritarian.)That is the core of the argument that I made in my original essay. There
was one aspect of Ed's response to it that needs to be pointed out before
I go any further, and that was his claim that my argument was Leninist.
Clearly, my argument is not based on radical or even socialist grounds,
let alone Leninism. It is simply a rejection of a particular form of
extremist absolutism, and in that regard it shows an area of agreement
between any variety of socialists and capitalists. It was ironic to read
his complaint, in an earlier draft of his essay, that in discussing (even
positively!) specific anarchists and their character I was committing the
ad-hominem fallacy, when a few lines later (present in the final draft) he
compared my argument to Leninism, though it has no relation to Leninism.
In that light, it wasn't his only commission of the ad-hominem fallacy.
His whole discussion of the shared radicalism of anarchists and "state
socialists," while it did show that we are not enemies in opposite camps,
served no function in relation to the argument he was trying to refute
other than to make it seem extreme; that is, there is nothing particularly
radical or socialist about my argument, though it is compatible with
socialism. So in "pointing out" that socialists have in common with
anarchists that they don't believe in private property (which is false by
the way - socialists only believe that the means of production -
factories, infrastructure, natural resources, etc. - shouldn't be
privately owned) he was attempting to make the argument against anarchist
librarianship seem radical when in fact it is simply an argument against
an abstract, idealistic, absolutist and ahistorical position. Personally,
I think it can be valid to bring aspects of the life or the character of a
person or a movement into a discussion about ideas, since, after all,
ideas don't exist in a vacuum or in a separate sphere of "propositions"
unconnected to the world. But to the extent that the fact that I am a
socialist or that the contemporary anarchist movement has certain
characteristics might be relevant to our argument we at least have to be
truthful, so I must take issue with the implication that my ideas are
Leninist. There may be Leninists who would agree with my argument, but
there are capitalists who agree with it also; that I am neither of those
is not a problem for them.A second thing that needs to be pointed out about Ed's response to my
argument is that it is based on a very narrow and specific version of
anarchism and doesn't do much to defend the compatibility of librarianship
and anarchism in general. While Ed didn't go so far as to accept my
assertion that modern librarianship depends on large-scale, complex
organization for its many layers of infrastructural standards, he didn't
really attempt to refute it either, saying merely that there were
"counterexamples" but offering very few. His "counterexamples" were
Infoshops and, oddly, corporate chain bookstores, neither of which are
libraries. As bookstores, both do in fact depend on the many layers of
infrastructure that support the publishing industry (small publishers and
Kinko's included), as well as the money system, the material
infrastructure involved in the facilities, the locks on the doors, the
telephones, etc. And Infoshops either operate above board, paying
business and sales taxes to the state which fund public projects such as
libraries, or they do not. So, Ed did not do much to reject the idea that
modern libraries depend on large scale social organization and
infrastructural standards, focusing instead on the argument that all of
that structured organization is ultimately possible according to anarchist
principles. It's important to point out that in doing that he left out a
lot of anarchist librarians who do NOT believe that all of that large
scale organization can be a part of an anarchist society (and those folks
are not all individualist anarchists, as he claimed). Many anarchists
believe that only very small organizational units can be legitimate,
because larger structures are alienating and lead to hierarchy. Their
viewpoint, which I believe represents the majority of anarchists in the
U.S., was left largely undefended in Ed's response.Ed's main point was that large scale social organization is possible under
anarchist principles. But that is a highly romantic idea, and for its
claim to realism it depends on romantic interpretations of its historical
examples. He cites the Mohawk Nation as an example of a federation of the
kind envisioned by Kropotkin. While the representatives of the tribes did
deliberate according to a version of a concensus process, and there was no
federal "police force," it is not as if members of the tribes weren't
bound by the decisions of their chosen representatives. It was
representative democracy with a sophisticated and fair process, not
anarchy. One can assume that a tribe member who didn't go along with what
was decided by their representative body, if it was a serious conflict,
would have been expelled from the group, and not necessarily voluntarily.
This is something that some people in some circumstances might have been
happy about ("You can't fire me, I quit! Good riddance to this screwed up
organization!") but in other situations must have represented an outcome
harsh enough to demand serious compromises. This is just like the order
in the layers of social organization that produce our infrastructural
standards. If Ed would say that that is an anarchist order then anarchism
would cease to seem very radical and its opposition to coercive authority
would seem to be doublespeak.In my original essay I focused on what I called the "paradox of voluntary
compliance," which is the way I described an anarchist state of affairs in
which everybody voluntarily follows rules which are arrived at by a
concensus process. Everybody is free not to follow the rules (or not to
observe the infrastructural standards) but no one exercises that freedom.
I said that the sense in which people are freer in that society is
somewhat empty, if that freedom is never exercised. Ed's response was
that the essential and important meaning of that freedom is in the absence
of coercion, and that such a state of affairs is logically possible. I
have to admit that a world in which everyone is cooperative, respects
order voluntarily and is altruistic is logically possible (and socialists
also want this world). It is also logically possible, however, that
tomorrow the world will awaken and be without sin, and the kingdom of God
will be at hand. The logical possibility of a world does not by itself
lay out a path to getting to it. The anarchist view seems to be that the
evil in the world is continually re-created by the world's attempts to
mitigate it, to remedy its effects and to control it. Remove those
attempts to control evil and the world will once again be an Eden. That's
an idea that is very attractive to that romantic sensibility that is
always somewhere in bloom. From the socialist point of view, however, the
present neoliberal order is putting that notion to the test via the
systematic deregulation and privatization of society, and evil is thriving
as a result. Ed himself recognizes that anarchism is in a sense simply a
stronger form of classical liberalism, or classical liberalism taken to
its logical extreme. (I like to call it absolutist liberalism.)
Socialists find no particular reason to believe that absent efforts to
shape society any particular positive outcome can be counted on, given
present society's shape as inherited from history. Love is not the only
force that history has passed forward to us unliberated. Marxists
emphasize the historical situation, for example viewing capitalism as a
positive historical development inasmuch as it overcame feudalism and
presently contains within it the potential to create socialism, rather
than simply positing an ideal world unconnected to other social and
political orders, which are simply seen as "bad." Marxism is rooted in
the actual development of human society, rather than simple faith in a
"logically possible" abstract ideal.Before I finish, I would like to correct the possible impression that my
argument is a defense of the status quo in society and libraries. To a
certain extent it is - I am saying that anarchism and librarianship are
incompatible because that particular radical vision ultimately has no room
for certain essential features of modern librarianship. In making this
argument I have defended hierarchy and authority as general principles in
social organization. I want to clarify that this doesn't mean I think the
answer to organizational or social problems is more hierarchy and
authority. It's merely their existence in organizations at a rational
minimum that I wish to defend. Many organizations allow power to become
too concentrated, and bureaucratic structures often divert energy and
authority into useless self-directed activity. Management groups often
end up isolated from people in organizations whose functional roles give
them unique interests, knowledge and a points of view that it is unfair to
them and impairing to the organization not to have well represented in
decision-making. I'm generally in favor of democratic reforms that
minimize the abuse of authority in organizations. But these are reforms
that require structure and authority themselves in order to maintain a
healthy balance of power between interest groups.Finally, I should correct any false impression that I wholly reject any
political role for faith (faith in humanity). I don't. I think that
faith in humanity is essential for socialism; without it politics becomes
paranoid and invites the worst in people. But that faith needs to be in
balance with realistic perception and analysis, with roots in the ground,
in order to be creative of more than a fantasy. There was a New Age
movement that gained some popularity in Australia and California in the
1980's called Breatharianism. Breatharians believed that by avoiding food
and living only on air (or light) we can finally become the immortal
ethereal spirit-beings of our highest potential. (See Wiley Brooks,
*Breatharianism: Breath and live forever, the healthy diet for eternal
beauty*, Breatharianism International, inc, 1982). A surprising number
of people really tried to do that, and a number of them died before their
leader was debunked on Australian 60 minutes. Now, I'm not trying to say
anarchism is as stupid as Breatharianism, and it may be unfair of me even
to make the comparison, but I do think Breatharianism represented a *waste
of faith* that is similar to the modern anarchist's wasted faith in a
sinless state of liberation. There is a similar pursuit of the absolute
and a similar logical reduction, and a similar lack of acknowledgement of
material necessity. Like Breatharianism, the anarchist faith seems more
of a religious gesture of rebellion against the sinful state of the world
than a positive creativity that's rooted in that world and loves it.If I seem to see anarchism as an airy-fairy sort of philosophy it is
because they seem to have no strategy for creating the world of their
vision(s). But that is to disregard violence. I have made a choice to
take Ed at face value when he claims that anarchists almost universally
repudiate violence, as they do tend to claim these days. But I can't let
it go without mentioning that I feel that I am indulging him in a pretense
in accepting that claim, for there is ample reason to connect real
anarchism with its stereotypical bomb-thrower. Ed's example of a
classical peace-loving anarchist was Enrico Malatesta, whom Ed quoted on
anarchism's ultimate basis in love rather than hate. Malatesta, however,
like all anarchists during the movement's heyday, openly advocated the
violent overthrow of capitalism. Do anarchists today have a different
notion of how to accomplish it? They insist that they aren't about
violence, but they generally prove this only by being content with
posturing. How to overthrow capitalism (or socialism) without the use of
violence (or the political process, which would be a contradiction of
anarchist philosophy) is, in my view, a kind of religious mystery.I have presented a much greater contrast between anarchism and socialism
than I originally intended to make. It's similar to the way two lines
that meet at an very acute angle end up very far apart when drawn to their
logical conclusions. I think that anarchism and socialism are close to
one another in the same way. Most of the time we stay close to the place
where those two lines meet, and as a result will be on the same side of
most issues. To that extent our positions are closer than I have
portrayed them to be. The difference is in the underlying theory and its
implications for "where we are coming from" when we act together
politically.I feel that this is has been a productive discussion, and I want to thank
Ed again for taking the time to participate.Rory Litwin
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4. Note on 1913 ALA Annual Conference in The Dial
The Dial: Semi-monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and
Information. July 16, 1913. Vol. 55, No. 650.The annual discussion of library problems which has recently occupied the
attention of our librarians in conference assembled impresses the observer
with the library's increasing closeness of relationship to the varied
interests and activities of modern life. So eager, in fact, has the
librarian become to enlarge and strengthen this relationship to every
conceivable legitimate device, that Mr. Legler, in his presidential
address, felt called upon to admonish his hearers against letting the
methods of the moment encroach upon the library's larger general
usefulness. The importance now attached to efficiency and specialization
does indeed threaten to overshadow the vital human element, and to make us
forget that even the most wonderfully efficient machine is an absolutely
soulless, heartless, lifeless piece of mechanism. Hence it is well that
the broadly human factor in library work received timely emphasis in the
speeches and debates at Kaaterskill. Among minor matters pressing for
attention were the probable future effect of the commission form of
municipal government upon public-library administration; the ever-present
problem of book-selection; more particularly of novel-selection; the
helpfulness or harmfulness of novels in the solution of social and
economic problems; the amount of attention that the public library,
especially the large library, should give to the special needs of
scholars; the question of granting librarians sufficient leisure for both
the reading and the recuperation that are necessary if the daily grind is
not speedily to result in lessened efficiency; and (this from the
delegate of the British Library Association) the detrimental effect of an
excessive employment of women in library work, not by reason of any
inferiority in such service, but because the salaries offered to young
girls and women are so low as to tend to diminish the remuneration of men
also, and to cause hardship in an already underpaid profession. On the
whole, the attendance at this thirty-fifth annual conference, the
addresses and discussions, the interest shown, and the whole atmosphere of
the convention, give encouraging evidence of the growing importance and
usefulness of the public library, which, as an appreciable factor in
promoting the public good, is not yet much more than half a century old,
and which in its modern development we are justified in proudly regarding
as preeminently an American institution.
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5. Noel Peattie, librarian and poet, has passed away
Date: Today 05:10:19 pm
From: "Elaine Harger" <eharger[at]agoron.net>
To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l[at]ala.org>
Reply to: srrtac-l[at]ala.orgDear Colleagues,
I just received the message below from Linda Pierce that
our colleague, kindred spirit and fellow activist Noel Peattie
passed away this morning.I will never forget Noel's debate with John Swan in my early
years as a librarian, arguing on behalf of the social responsibilities
of librarianship. I have no doubt that his arguments against Swan's
intellectual freedom "purism" were what drew me into allegiance
with the social responsibilities advocates in librarianship. The debate
was published under the title The Freedom to Lie: a debate about
democracy. A few years later John Swan phoned me as he was dying
to say that he had come to really appreciate the contributions of
SRRT and PLG to librarianship, and I've no doubt that his debate
with Noel contributed greatly to that recognition.A great soul has departed the world of the living, but his spirit
will be around long after we're all gone ourselves.Viva la Noel!
Elaine
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
From: "David Peattie" <dp[at]whereaboutspress.com
Date: January 13, 2005 4:19:51 PM CST
To: <dp[at]whereaboutspress.com
Subject: Noel Peattie: Goodbye to a beloved poet
Reply-To: <dp[at]whereaboutspress.comDear family, friends, and Friends:
It is with a heavy heart that I pass along the news that my uncle Noel
Peattie, passed away this morning.As many of you know, he'd been recovering from hip replacement surgery
when complications arose, apparently unrelated; this morning after
complaining of difficulty breathing, he went into cardiac arrest and
could not be revived.Along with members of his Quaker Friends meeting, we'll be planning a
memorial service, and when we agree upon a date, I'll be sure to send a
notice to this list. If you know of others not on this list who would
want to know, please don't hesitate to contact me.In the meantime, please feel free to go to his website,
http://www.noelpeattie.com/. You can order copies of his books of poetry
from Regent Press, and they'll be available at his memorial service, in
addition to a new book of poetry, "The Testimony of Doves," which he was
just completing reviewing proofs for when interrupted by his hospital stay.
I will work with Regent Press to make sure they're completed in time for
his memorial service.David Peattie
The Way to Get Through Life
is to try! yes, how?
to forget
most of it.Like, all the yeears at school,
(but not the lifelong friends,then, the weekends that were joy;
city adventures);and rather hope for, much later:
vast witty banquets;
at which you'll be honored
-- poems of a lifetime! --
under glittering chandeliers.And welcome: all goings to bed:
even those
alone:except the last,
except the last.
Noel Peattie
from the forthcoming "The Testimony of Doves"
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