Content area
Full Text
“To be prevented from participation in the political life of the community is a major deprivation”
(Sen, 1999, p. 10).
1. Introduction
The notion that “Information is the currency of democracy” is attributed to Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the US Declaration of Independence. Drafted in 1776, it is regarded as the first formal statement by a nation’s people of their democratic right to choose their government. It has been influential beyond the USA, notably during the French Revolution (Declaration of Independence, 2009).
During the Second World War when the future of democracy was in jeopardy, Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to the role of libraries in democracy: “Libraries are directly and immediately involved in the conflict which divides our world, […] because they are essential to the functioning of a democratic society[…]” (cited by Ditzion, 1947, p. v). The exercise of democratic rights, however, is based on certain preconditions such as having educated citizens, and access to the information which is needed to inform and exercise such rights.
Access to information was given a boost in the 1850s with the birth of the public library movement in the USA and elsewhere. The rates-based tax-supported public library became the commonly accepted model and was linked to the movement for universal schooling (McCook, 2001). In 1949, Shera (1949, p. vi), a notable proponent of the democratising function of the public library, summed up this relationship: “The modern public library in large measure represents the need of democracy for an enlightened electorate, and its history records its adaptation to changing social requirements”. Ditzion (1947) documented the role of public libraries regarding education and democracy in education after formal schooling. Libraries provided “a people’s university” and “a wholesome capable citizenry would be fully schooled in the conduct of a democratic life” (p. 74). McCook (2001, p. 10) affirmed this role: “for librarians, democracy is our arsenal, our cornerstone, our beacon, our strongest value”.
As early as the 1850s, however, a certain “democratic paternalism” regarding the free public library was evident in newspapers in Boston. The library was seen rather unrealistically as a magic wand for social reform, and a bulwark against “tendencies to dissipation […]” (Ditzion, 1947, p. 24). Ditzion (1947) sums up this attitude as providing public...