ACONDA and ANACONDA: Social Change, Social Responsibility, and Librarianship
Raber, Douglas
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/3717
Description
Title
ACONDA and ANACONDA: Social Change, Social Responsibility, and Librarianship
Author(s)
Raber, Douglas
Issue Date
2007
Keyword(s)
Libraries and society
American Library Association
Social responsibility
Abstract
In the context of the declining legitimacy of the war in Vietnam and
widespread challenges to the authority of established institutions and
cultural norms, the American Library Association (ALA) was the
target of criticism by a diverse coalition of librarians who asserted two
broad demands; first, that the ALA expand the scope of its activities
to include consideration of social and political issues that had not,
to that point, been regarded as “library” issues by the established
leadership of the ALA; second, that the ALA democratize its structure
of decision making. This challenge led to the creation of the
Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT), which is still active as a
component of the ALA. It also prompted the formation of two committees
in response to the above demands: the Activities Committee
on New Directions (ACONDA) and the Ad Hoc Activities Committee
on New Directions (ANACONDA). A central concept at play in the
politics of these events is the notion of “social responsibility” and its
meaning in time of war and social change. This article focuses on
the discourse of the challengers to the ALA and the ALA’s response
through the work of ACONDA and ANACONDA to examine the
contesting and contested meanings of the “social responsibility” of
libraries, librarianship, and the ALA. These events and this discursive
struggle established an explicit professional concern for and continuing
conflict over the meaning and role of libraries and librarianship
in the creation of culture that before these events had been merely
implicit in professional discourse.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/3717
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