Knott Malone Article

Knott Malone argues that the study of multiculturalism in library history is complicated by the public libraries’ practice of social control in favor of white Anglo/ Saxon upper-middle class ideology. Given the historical interpretation of hegemonic efforts in libraries multiculturalism needs to be looked at differently and it also needs continuous attention because is it constantly changing. The simple fact that more attention to diversity is necessary in public libraries seems to me to be the most important reason to look at this aspect of library history.

I realize that this article was an overview of secondary sources but like Beck’s article it made me what want to know more. For example, Knott Malone says that non-black minority librarians worked with more diverse staffs than African Americans did. Why? Was it due to segregation or maybe it was dependent on location? At the end of the article Knott Malone mentions that there needs to be more research on individual’s and community group’s experiences with libraries but it is my understanding that these are often left out of history, thus creating the one-sided institutional history that she critiques, because they are so few and far between and the examples that we do get are highly subjective. Regardless, where can researchers look specifically for this type of information?

The paragraph about white-black relations was full of promising areas of investigation. This is partly because African Americans have a rich and nuanced history that intersects with the public library in interesting ways. What kind of access to libraries and library schools did black people have? What role did libraries play in civil rights activism?

She mentions it only briefly but my guess is that the experiences of Latinos in libraries are probably another good perspective to research in the effort to really explore multiculturalism.