locating-the-library-in-institutional-oppression.md~

nina de jesus | 
digital project librarian | 
York University

#Locating the Library in Institutional Oppression

##1. Introduction

###1.1 Topological Survey

The proposition of attempting to understand where the library is located within institutional oppression is a difficult one. First, because institutional oppression itself actively works to disguise, erase, and obfuscate its traces and consequences. It is very much the proverbial devil whose greatest trick is to convince the world that it does not exist. Second, because people sincerely and truly love libraries. They love libraries for a variety of reasons but many tend to associate libraries with a cluster of values that is difficult to gainsay without appearing to side with some fairly unsavoury and undesirable values. 

Neil Gaiman recently wrote this about libraries:

>Libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information. [^1]

How do you begin a project of locating the library within institutionalized oppression when this quotation represents a common view of libraries? Albeit, even if we understand this as being idealistic and unrealistic, a less idealistic understanding of libraries still frames them largely as institutions for good but ones that, perhaps, occassionally fail to live up to their values.

How do we reconcile this understanding of libraries with the very real fact that we continue to live in a deeply inequitable society? A society where oppression fundamentally structures all of our political, social, and economic relationships and institutions? Exploring the topology and geography of institutional oppression is a perilous activity and frought with many dangers. Starting an expidetion with the goal of finding a much beloved institution will require careful planning.

###1.2 Plotting a course

This excursion shall begin by attempting to answer this question: "What are libraries?". It is a question fraught with difficulties and contested areas: however, in a grand sense the ultimate goal of this excursion will be to provide one kind of answer to this question. 

The first answer we'll approach is what the library is in the imagination of the 'public,' as expressed by the articles, defenses, and love letters to the library written by people of varying levels of fame and notoriety. 

Then we shall attempt to explicate what the library is in the imagination of its labour force. 

Next we will delve into the history of libraries to hopefully uncover what libraries were intended to be. This will involve understanding and engaging the notion that libraries are institutions that have been shaped and created as a means to embody and enforce a particular ideology. 

Neither will necessarily be *the* answer, but perhaps they'll contribute to a nuanced and complex understanding of libraries. One which disrupts and challenges the fairly dominant narratives of the library as wholly good by exploring the ways that the library can be bad. 


[^1]: Gaiman, Neil. “Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming.” The Guardian, October 15, 2013, sec. Books. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming.