Come Again? Is this Partisanship or Neutrality that we Librarians are supposed to advocate?

Stole this from Conservator

WHAT TO MAKE OF LIBRARY JOURNAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF John N. Berry III's October 1 outing for his "Blatant Berry" series of occasional columns, "The Librarian's New Role"?

At an immediate level, it is curious to see Berry describing a "new, complex role" for librarians centered on a responsibility to "find and deliver accurate information," just one month after his editorial on the role of public libraries in America ("Reposition Public Libraries") appeared under the subtitle, "It is time to rethink the primary focus on information."

No less confusing in the present piece is Berry's requirement that librarians be "nonpartisan," just one day after a "news" item in Library Journal ("Litwin Out of 'Library Juice'") quoted without comment Library Juice publisher Rory Litwin's interest in "publishing more extended, and I hope somewhat deep, reflections on questions of progressive librarianship."

Or is it the case that "progressive librarianship" is "nonpartisan"?

Librarian John Buschman of the Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG) asserts, in an article posted yesterday to New York's Newsday.com ("Today's librarians challenging stereotypes"), that there is "something inherently progressive in collecting and preserving information for people[.]"

Weren't there policial regimes back in the last century that insisted on drafting entire professions to one political movement or another?

Posted by Jack Stephens

Can't get much plainer than that.