“Librarians are extremely liberal and, thanks to our tax dollars, insulated from their consumers' preferences.”
The National Post looks at the bias against conservative books in bookstores and public libraries in an article titled “Ignoring Canada's Conservative Readers”. (Thanks to Christina W. for the tip!)
(By the way, the second last book I read was Ari Fleischer's Taking Heat,: The President, The Press and My Years in the White House…which I got at the London Public Library.)
Comments 9
There may indeed be such a bias, but that article certainly doesn't make a convincing argument for it. She says she searched for “Regnery Publishing” in a bunch of catalogues, and gives the numbers of results. Which don't *mean* anything at all, unless you compare them to other numbers. Besides which, is Regnery Publishing the only conservative press out there? Hardly. It's a ridiculous line of reasoning…if you did this properly, you'd evaluate a lot more of the collection of a library (hopefully comparing with other measures like bestselling book lists and so on), and of course compare the library's conservative-book collection with its numbers of liberal books, which is an obvious step, and which Barbara Kay didn't even take a stab at – except anecdotally. *rolls eyes* Sloppy, sloppy…
…And I wouldn't be surprised if some of the MARC records of Regnery books only list “Regnery”, not “Regnery Publishing”, in their 260 fields – so not only her scientific method but also her search strategy was flawed. *sniff*
Of course, it's the National Post. Actual scientific analysis may be too much to ask (especially if its conclusions don't wind up supporting the persecuted-conservative complex…)
Maybe a library student should do such a study! 🙂 I'm sure it would be far, far better done. And leave out the emotional rhetoric.
…Illogical reasoning that tries to pass itself off as a rational argument is one of my rant-buttons, I fear. 🙂
I agree with the previsou comment, it seems a biased form of research. While librarians may be wholly liberal in nature – we are, after all, obsessed with the gathering and unlimited access to information, whereas more and more it appears the conservative governments want less and less access to information allowed to the general public – I can easily find a multitude of 'conservative' tomes in any library. The fact that THIS particular publisher is not represented is hardly indicative of a bias.
That said, there probably is one. But, truth be told, hard for me to find any sympathy.
Just to be clear, I'm with you guys on this – I think it's a ridiculously goofy article. I mainly wanted an opportunity to point out that stat about librarians giving to Kerry over Bush by a ratio of 223:1.
Lauralee points out some of the “drive a truck through them” holes in this article – limited sample sizes – both in what they're looking for and also how many catalogues they look at, inherent bias of the paper presenting this article, etc. etc.
Can you even search an OPAC by publisher???
“Just to be clear, I'm with you guys on this”
Well, I figured that. 🙂 I did think the 223:1 stat was cool, too.
“Can you even search an OPAC by publisher???”
I don't think it's usually an option provided, but keyword searching includes the 260 field, so – yes.
Well, what do you know…works like a charm on LPL's OPAC (Millennium, I think.) I went back to Regina's and tried it and it didn't seem to work (which is probably where I got this idea that you couldn't search any library OPAC by publisher.) But now that I'm almost done library school, I know about the magic of the 260 field and suspect that this is probably possible in Dynix (which RPL uses) but maybe they don't have it enabled or its configured incorrectly or something. (I'll ask them if I ever get an interview there!)
My library uses Dynix too, and keyword searching for publisher works with their OPAC. But you're right, RPL's doesn't work. Guess it must be configured differently. There are probably settings where you can specify which fields keyword searching ought to include…just not in the cataloguing module, which is mostly what I'm familiar with. 🙂
Calgary Public Library uses Dynix too and they allow publisher searching: https://catalogue.calgarypubliclibrary.com/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=NL65085882L37.42281&menu=search&aspect=subtab99&npp=20&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=testa–1&ri=&index=.GW&term=%22coteau+books%22&x=0&y=0&aspect=subtab99
I wonder why Regina doesn't? I'm not a database expert by any stretch but I know that the more fields you enable searching for, the more impact it can have on search time results (although I think this is much less of an issue than it used to be.) Maybe that's the reason?
(When you say “your library” do you mean the one you're on co-op at or your local public library?)
The one I'm on coop at. 🙂