Compliant Trust: The Public Good and Democracy in the ALA’s “Core Values of Librarianship”

This paper will consider the Core Values of The Public Good and Democracy as articulated in the American Library Association’s “Core Values of Librarianship” (2004) and its affiliated documents in conjunction with the ways in which these two Core Values are deployed in library discourse around the Ferguson (Missouri) Public Library, particularly during the last four months of 2014. Both the ALA’s Core Values document and library discourse around Ferguson heavily rely upon liberalism in regard to power and conflict, subjectivity and equality, and capitalism. This reliance results in a vision of librarianship and an understanding of the Ferguson Public Library that are completely decoupled from political, economic, social, and historical contexts. This decontextualized discourse fits seamlessly within neoliberal ideology and is ultimately antidemocratic.