Libraries and democracy
an interview with Erik Allerslev Jensen
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LIBRARIES AND DEMOCRACY -
AN INTERVIEW WITH ERIK ALLERSLEV JENSEN
One of the most well-known and most respected librarians of Scandinivia, Erik
Allerslev Jensen, has now retired from active library life. 1960-1976 he was
Danish Library Director, and in the strong development of the Danish public
libraries during this period Erik Allerslev Jensen was one of the most frontrank
figures, often the leading one. He has also been an eager protagonist for Nordic
and international library cooperation: Founder and Director of the Nordic School
of Advanced Library Studies 1958?68, President of Public Libraries Section of
IFLA 1965-69, member of Executive Board of IFLA 1967-73 - and founder (and
1968-70 editor) of this publication.
His library life has - mostly been one of great progress, but looking at the
political situation of his home-country of to-day, Erik Allerslev Jensen seems
to find reasons for preparations for a more severe library climate.
SPLQ:
In many ways, Denmark has led the the whole development of library systems in
Scandinavia. And in certain areas there are still major qualitative differences
between Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries. What do you feel to be the
main reason for this unevenness o f development?
EAJ:
These discrepancies are growing less, and I'm sure they will soon vanish
altogether. But one of the reasons why Denmark has led the field, I think, is
the long?standing interplay between central and local government responsibility
for the libraries, with government grants on a considerable scale. The purpose
of this interplay, as I see it, is to secure an average standard for the country
as a whole: in other countries, where library operations are purely a municipal
respon-sibility, you have to reckon that individual municipalities will have
fantastic libraries - among the best in the world - while some will have very
poor libraries, and others again none at all. It seems important to me that one
should not only be able to improve the good libraries one has, and make them
still better, but that one should also get down to improving things in places
where the service is poor. And this sort of opening is not achieved by giving
all the responsibility to the municipal authorities. As I see it, this is very
closely bound up with a legislation resembling that we have in education. And in
fact, in its manifesto on public libraries, UNESCO has urged member coun-tries
to ensure nationwide library services by means of legislation.
SPLQ:
What do you think are the most important differences as regards the
opportunities for a strong development of the libraries between, on the one hand,
Denmark, which has long had a Libraries Act, and, on the other, Sweden, which
hasn't got an Act of this kind?
EAJ:
In Sweden, we have seen a trend towards certain large authorities - the big
towns ? organising a splendid service, and spending masses of money on it, while
others neglect this job. And there is no way of forcing an improved service in
areas where it is poor, if you don't have an Act. In the absence of an Act,
central government efforts in Swe-den cannot play the same role in levelling?out
standards as they do in Denmark.
SPLQ:
But even in the countries where library services are well developed, major
groups of the community are outside, or feel alien to the libraries' supply. The
main reasons for this, naturally, are social, economic, and educational. What do
you feel to be the most important functions of our libraries when it comes to
eliminating these obsta-cles?
EAJ:
I think the only way to solve this problem today is to assign parts of the
library system to actual workplaces, where they can provide an outreach library
service. One of the good aspects of library systems in the socialist countries
is that the function has been decentralised when it comes to workplaces. And by
workplaces are meant not only schools and universities, but also factories,
offices, and so on, places where people work and spend time. And provided this
is possible from the purely practical point of view, which is to say provided
the in-stitution is of a certain size, then an opportunity should be available
there to use a library.
The experiments with libraries at workplaces now under way in the Scandinavian
countries are somewhat solitary swallows. Projects in which a few thousandes
kronor are got together with enormous difficulty to start the whole thing off.
They are not, as you might say, fully orchestrated.
SPLQ:
Do you think an organisation with a "full orchestra" would neces-sarily involve
taking resources from other sectors of the library sys-tem, and assigning them
to the libraries at places of work?
EAJ:
No, I don't think so. In fact, you have to be perfectly clear that a system with
fully developed libraries at places of work would be much more expensive than
the present system, simply because of the higher degree of use that would result.
It is quite obvious that it would give us a mass of new users, people who had
not previously had an opportunity to borrow books. So I don't think one can take
anything from other sectors for this purpose ? the system as such is far too
small.
SPLQ:
Do you think the libraries have a role to play ? and if so what sort of role ?
when it comes to altering the social conditions of those groups which do not
today use the libraries?
EAJ:
Yes, there the librarians and other library staff have the same openings as
other citizens to work for a social system that will make possible a change of
this kind in the distribution of resources. They can work for this both within
and outside their professions. But I don't think one can expect from library
workers as a group any direct, concrete activity to alter social conditions.
As far as I'm concerned, it is an absolutely impossible idea that library
workers should organise themselves in a socialist front and take as their prime
objective the introduction of a socialist system. It cannot be the role of the
libraries to fight on one or the other side. The role of the libraries is to put
material at the disposal both of those who are concerned to work for socialism
and of those who want the opposite.
SPLQ:
Looking at the present difficult political situation in Denmark, I should like
to ask you what you feel it means for the libraries that highly reactionary
forces inimical to culture are acquiring an increasing amount o f room in
popular opinion?
EAJ:
It involves a danger of the more or less total annihilation of the public
libraries and their activities. The "Progress Party" ? the reactionary,
Poujardiste party ? considers that the libraries should "pay their way", in
other words that users should pay the costs. This would make it possible to
establish elite libraries for the welloff, who can pay the costs of a firstclass
service of this kind, while the great majority of the population would not get
any library service whatsoever. That is one aspect of the present situation. The
other is that ? even if such a reactionary attitude, and one so hostile to
culture, sounds fantastic ? we should not underestimate the significance of such
views being put forward in political life. They make, in fact, a greater or a
lesser im-pact on the non?socialist parties, which are afraid above all of
violent attacks from the far right. Indirectly, the attitude of the "Progress
Party" on these questions, and the pressures that it exerts, mean that the
non?socialist parties tend more or less to give way in certain si-tuations.
There are, after all, many people in these parties who hold, in their hearts,
the same views as the "Progress Party". Just like the warhorse hearing the
trumpets, they prick their ears and say "Aha".
SPLQ:
During your last years as Director of Libraries, the waves of debate rolled
pretty high in Denmark as regards the role of the libraries, and the influence
of the state. And after a great deal of argument to and fro, the revized
Libraries Act that finally saw the light of day last year involved a marked
weakening of the state's commitment in this field. In the light of this, how do
you see the future development of Den-mark's public libraries?
EAJ:
I take a very dark view of the future, because the new Act that we have is in
reality one that simply postpones abolition of the Libraries Act for two or
three years. The further extension of the present Act involves the introduction
of block grants, which mean ? so far as the libraries are concerned ? that the
state grants are incorporated in a lump sum which the individual municipality
can use as it pleases. This means that if it doesn't want to spend any of the
state's funds on the libraries then it needn't; if it wants to spend a whole lot
of money on them, then it can do that too. But we probaly shouldn't reckon on
the latter being the case to any great extent. So that if a system of block
grants is introduced within the next few years, it will cause irreparable damage
to the public libraries. The existing discrepancies in standards beween
different local authorities, which have so far been largely evened out by the
state grants, will be aggravated. One can take, for example, the case of Sweden,
which on average has a very high stan-dard of libraries. There, the gap between
the best libraries and the worst is very large, all too large. And this will
always be the result when the municipalities themselves are 100 per cent
responsible. And with the block grant system, this is the development we shall
see in Denmark too. Even if we possess good resources in our public libraries ?
and we do ? it will not take all that long before they become antiquated and
inadequate.
In the United States, which has otherwise been a pioneer in the library sector,
I once heard an American librarian explain that one third of the population has
access to a superb library service, and one third to a fairly inadequate
service, while one third gets no service at all. This is hardly a consummation
to be desired. The situation has in all certainty changed since federal support
to the public libraries was introduced in 1956. But the libraries we see on
visits to the States naturally belong to the upper third.
SPLQ:
You have been keenly involved ? to put it mildly ? in Scandinavian collaboration
in the library field. We need only recall the Kungälv courses (the Scandinavian
School of Further Training for Librarians), which were your creation. Would you
care to give views on this colla-boration, a bit o f the background, and the
importance it has had?
EAJ:
In putting forward the idea of the Kungälv courses, I was influenced by the
Scandinavian collaboration that was under way in a number of fields. Once I'd
started to interest myself in training, I found that Arne Kildal, who later
became the Norwegian Director of Libraries, had proposed as early as in 1917 the
setting up of a joint Scandinavian school of librarianship. No training in
librarianship was given at that time in the Scandinavian countries, although
preparations were being made for a school in Copenhagen. Familiar as he was with
the American library system, and believing that the Scandinavian coun-tries were
so close to each other in their social structure, mentality, and so on, he
considered that a joint school of this kind would be tremendously valuable. One
can't help thinking that if only this idea had been realised, then a great deal
could have been uniformly structured in the Scandinavian libraries, including
the solutions to technical problems. If we had this sort of joint training, then
we would have been forced to arrive at joint rules on cataloguing, and a joint
classification system. After all, it is not any sort of national interest that
has dictated that "elephants", for example, are assigned to a dif-ferent place
in each of our systems. And in many other fields we should also have arrived at
joint rules, which would have strengthened Scandinavian collaboration, and thus
also development in each indivi-dual country. But unfortunately local patriotism
carried the day in 1917, as it has done on so many occasions since.
The main significance of the Kungälv school is that it has stimulated a sense of
Scandinavian community. That sounds a bit unattractive and highflown, but it's
something of that sort I mean. As an institution for professional, theoretical
training, Kungäalv was naturally very restric-ted owing the great differences
between our countries, which emerge when you sit down round a table and start
looking into things. But the opportunity to get together with, other
professionals has meant a lot to many of those taking part, and probably also
for the debate in certain fields.
SPLQ:
What is your judgment of other Scandinavian collaboration in the library sector,
between the library associations, and the directors of libraries, and so on?
EAJ:
The continuous Scandinavian library meetings I think are an excellent
institution. Above all the personal contacts between the Scandinavian directors
of libraries, the heads of the Scandinavian schools of libra-rianship etc., are
of importance per se. You can always learn some-thing from the way other people
solve problems.
I think one should add in this context that it is a definite advantage in our
collaboration that the library systems of the different Scandinavian countries
have developed essentially at the same pace. This applies, for example, with
regard to a common Scandinavian labour market. I think it would not only be an
excellent idea, I think it more or less self?evident that we should employ
colleagues from our Scandinavian neighbours to a much greater extent than we do,
that we should have a real common labour market. This problem could have been
solved if Kildal's proposal had been accepted in 1917. But the collaboration
that exists should be greatly expanded. We shall be much stronger if we can act
as a unit. We must not forget that these are small areas we are speaking of,
with an aggregate population hardly greater than that of two or three states in
the USA.
Particularly in certain purely technical fields, collaboration and joint action
are bound to offer great advantages; I am thinking here, for example, of library
furnishings and the publication of catalogues, the sort of things that the
Scandinavian library centres are concerned with to a very great extent. These
have not only shown themselves a typi-cally Scandinavian type of enterprise,
they have also been of tre-mendous importance, as is clear for example from
their fields of work and the sort of budgets they now operate with.
As head of the first library centre in Denmark, I had a budget, if I remember
rightly, of 17,000 Dkr., and when I left the job in 1946 I was very proud to
have got turnover up to 200,000 Dkr. The centre's current budget is something
around 50-60 million Dkr.
The whole of development shows that there can be no doubt of the advantages to
be won by collaboration.
SPLQ:
Your international involvement is by no means restricted to Scan-dinavia. You
have long had well?established library contacts the world over. What do you
think it possible to achieve by international collaboration in the library
sector, in view o f the vast differences in the initial positions of different
countries, politically, economically, and culturally?
EAJ:
It is true of international collaboration to an even greater extent than of
Scandinavian that the important thing is personal contacts, while it can be very
difficult to agree on purely technical questions. When it comes specifically to
getting collaboration going between countries with widely differing cultural and
economic backgrounds, I must say this has not been the greatest difficulty in
international collaboration. People work, for example, very well together in
groups comprising representatives of both the east and west, because it it is
found, on closer study, that the actual basic problems are identical to a
greater extent than you might think. And just a simple matter like people from
the east and west working together on committees and in sections I feel to be
important. The countries that particularly benefit from international
collaboration, and from the activities of IFLA, are those with poorly developed
library systems. And here it is at all events some-thing positive that we can
describe and demonstrate to these countries how the problem of providing library
services has been solved in the Scandinavian countries.
Interviewer: Jan Ristarp