All societies should allow universal access to libraries, so that they can help citizens to educate themselves.
—John Stonehouse1
We must begin with the basic premise that everyone has a right to have access to library resources and services, irrespective of who they are and where and under which conditions they live. That concept is known as equity of access. Equity does not mean equality, but it does mean fairness. It is a key element in the concept of social justice—the idea that every person in society is entitled to a fair shake. In a world in which social justice prevailed, there would be no barriers to the elementary rights to which we are all entitled. In such a society all would have equal access to library resources and services as well as the universal rights to justice, medical care, employment, education, housing, free speech, and liberty that all humans have irrespective of their status and condition of life. We inhabit a far from an ideal world, and the things that distinguish us each from the other have an effect on our use of libraries as they do on every other service that we need or want. An ideal world of equality of access is out of reach, but it is by no means impossible to achieve a world in which librarians and library users have reached a far greater state of fairness than now.
Equity of access is often referred to as “unfettered access.” “To fetter” means “to restrain or confine”—a metaphorical extension of the notion of physically shackling or fettering a human being. The metaphor is continued in the phrase “unfettered access”—that is, access to libraries and their services that is unconstrained and free. The American Library Association’s Statement on equity of access states:
Equity of access means that all people [are entitled to] have the information they need—regardless of age, education, ethnicity, language, income, physical limitation, or geographic barriers. It means they are able to obtain information in a variety of formats—electronic, as well as print. It also means they are free to exercise their right to know without fear of censorship or reprisal.2
It is a pity that the statement uses the flabby word “information” in the first sentence, when something like “library resources and services” is clearly meant. (The statement shows all the signs of having been written by a committee that had been meeting for a very long time.) It may also appear to be unnecessarily complex, but one can understand why the words “age, education, ethnicity, language, income, physical limitation, or geographic barriers” are there—because, in their absence, one could not deny access to a library to a naked person or one in the grip of homicidal mania. Absent such threats to life, safety, decency, buildings, and the like, no one may be denied access because of her age, gender, economic status, ethnic origin, or any other categorization that does not inhibit her legal, constitutional, and moral rights. In a modern twist to an old story, equity of access to digital resources implies that library users have a right to information, training, and assistance necessary to operate the hardware and software provided by the library. This latter is not a negligible point; it implies that librarians and staff in libraries large and small must possess—in addition to their other professional abilities and skills—up-to-date technological and practical knowledge of all the means by which users gain access to those digital resources (knowledge that needs constant refreshing).
Libraries deal with the human record, but are not the only institutions that do so. The ideal is fairness in access to all forms, but we should recall that much of that access is outside libraries and not in the purview of librarians. Purchasing a book, downloading streaming media, using an online resource, or visiting an art gallery are all manifestations of access to recorded knowledge and information. It is important that we play our part; at the same time, we should concentrate on the aspects of this value over which we can have some control: access to library resources and services. We should also work with other agencies to promote all aspects of access because an educated citizenry requires the full range of access afforded by libraries and other cultural institutions.
Equity of access involves removing or minimizing all the many barriers to use of library resources and programs for all library users. Just as with many other contemporary issues in librarianship (“information literacy” comes to mind), many librarians, educators, and others have focused the discussion on—and only on—the technological aspects of library service. I am sure that a cursory examination of the problem will reveal that students in poor rural or inner-city areas with no or poor library service absolutely will not have equity of access to the same universe of knowledge as their better-off peers, even if they have access to online resources. Real library services and collections staffed by librarians are as necessary to all children as are good teachers. This applies to all grades—from kindergarten students who need access to good age-appropriate books, story hours, the attention of skilled librarians, and all the other things that instill an early love of reading and learning, to high school students looking for guidance on what to read and do research into new topics.
Equity of access, then, means that all people deserve and should be given the recorded knowledge and information they want, no matter who they are and in which format that knowledge and information is contained. It means that one should be able to have access (either to a library building or from a remote location), that library services should assist in the optimal use of library resources, and that those resources should be relevant and worthwhile. “All people,” of course, includes disadvantaged groups and minorities of various kinds. Take, for example, the question of the right to equity of access of people with physical and mental handicaps. In her study of the provision of library services to young people with disabilities in Western Australia, Denise Barker states:
In my experience, the greatest barrier facing young people with disabilities comes from not the physical aspect but how others perceive them and at times treat them differently because of their disability. I have heard stories of people over compensating and assistance being offered when it is not required, as well as people with disabilities being ignored or spoken to in a condescending manner. By library staff working with organisations and agencies involved with service provision to young people with disabilities they can encourage them to come to libraries. Library staff will gain invaluable informal training. Also, the young person with the disability becomes more comfortable and may even be led to use more public facilities.3
Thus we see that equity of access is not only a practical question but also a way of thinking about library users and how there are many kinds of barrier to that access.
I have already written of the importance of intellectual freedom to libraries. The question of access to library materials and library services is linked to that. It is important to make everything accessible to everybody without fear or favor, but it is equally important to ensure that such access is practically possible and not biased in favor of the better-off or the more powerful. Such equitable access is brought into question by some aspects of technology. For example, in the United States we are seeing a continuing (if little noticed) scandal in the dissemination of government documents (the contents of which are our property to which we are all entitled). It is well known that the information and recorded knowledge generated by the government is not as available to all citizens as it is to some business interests, and the excellent system of depository libraries is being dismantled by a combination of actions and inaction of Congress. In their zeal to embrace the all-digital future, Congress forgets (or chooses not to acknowledge) three major problems with this approach. First, there is no depository library divide—anyone can gain access to government information without payment using them—but there still is a digital divide. Second, the government gives no guarantee that all-digital government information will be preserved for future citizens and scholars and has no plans to give that guarantee. Third, what the government holds digitally, the government can alter, delete, or deny access to at will. Hardly a prospect that should appeal to civil libertarians, Libertarians, or those suspicious of Big Government.
More generally, the idea of charging for access to library materials and library services is much more popular today. There seems to be a difference, in some people’s minds, between “free” print and other materials and “cost recovery” access to digital resources. Interestingly, many libraries still pay for digital resources from outside their materials budgets, and that may condition their willingness to charge for what are seen as extras even in budgetary terms. In a world of access being limited by the ability to pay, the all-digital idea is, essentially, an elitist construct that writes off sections of society as doomed to be “information poor.”
I am not saying it is inevitable that libraries using technology intensively as an enhancement to their services are going to betray the value of equity of access. However, it is evident that there is an inherent contradiction in society’s approach to the use of technology—the disconnect between the idea of technology making more information accessible to more people and the inability of many (because of who they are and their economic status) to take advantage of that accessibility. That contradiction should make us very sensitive to the idea of maintaining libraries that are freely available to all, irrespective of social standing and economic circumstances. This value is especially important to those libraries that serve a population containing a majority of economically disadvantaged users.
There are many reasons why one individual may not have equitable access to the recorded knowledge and information that he needs. Not all library resources and services are available to all without distinction, and the factors that inhibit access vary from person to person and place to place. Even someone who is in a library physically may have barriers to his use that are not present for others in the same building. Not all these inequities are eliminated by technology; in fact, as we have seen in the discussion of the digital divide, technology may itself introduce new inequities.
Barriers to equity of access may, broadly, be grouped into three categories: personal, institutional, and societal. Here are the types of barriers in each category.
Personal. Poverty. Physical disability. Lack of mobility. Level of knowledge. Level of education. Level of literacy. English language skills. Level of computer skills.
Institutional. Location of the library. Layout of library building. Type, quantity, and availability of equipment. Helpfulness of staff. Availability of staff.
Societal. Education system. Political environment. Unequal funding of library services.
If one or more of the descriptions and states of living in the following list apply to you, you are very likely to have lesser or even no access to the library resources you need and to the services that enable you to use them.
poor . . . ailing . . . member of a single-parent household . . . disabled . . . live in a rural area . . . very young . . . live in the inner city . . . old . . . member of an ethnic minority . . . wrong side of the digital divide . . . have limited English proficiency . . . no or limited computer skills . . . incarcerated . . . no or limited private or public transportation . . . undereducated
When we contemplate the number and multidimensionality of the barriers to access, it can readily be seen that creating equity of library access for all is a complex and extraordinarily difficult task.
Let us look at some things that are increasing and would increase equity of access. The following is not an exhaustive list by any means; it contains measures that librarians can and do carry out or influence as well as measures that we cannot, and it consists of public policy and purely library steps to be taken. The list is not in order of priority or importance.
• Increase the number of school libraries and of librarians with teaching credentials to work in them.
• Provide more equitable funding for counties, school districts, and other governmental units within states.
• Offer classes in libraries on
• literacy
• English-language skills
• information competence
• computer skills
• Keep branch public libraries open in rural areas and inner-city areas.
• Ensure that “smart” libraries and schoolrooms are accompanied by personnel trained in computer skills and information competence.
• Go beyond the minimal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act in building and retrofitting libraries, particularly by consulting library users with disabilities.
• Work to remove restrictions on the library rights of the incarcerated.
• Take library services to the people by such measures as
• mobile libraries
• branches and library services in “unconventional” settings, such as shopping malls, college dormitories, day care and senior centers, and hospitals and hospices
• Ensure that online systems are current, accessible, and user friendly.
If we are to work in a coordinated manner to reduce inequities of access on all fronts, we must recognize that individuals have a part to play, libraries and other public institutions have a part to play, and legislators and others interested in public policy issues have a part to play. I have long thought that the articulation of all these interests and influences will require a major and sustained profession-wide campaign that can be led only by the American Library Association. Such a campaign will be based on the simple idea that it is a societal injustice for access to library resources and programs to be conditioned on any of a variety of states of life. The potential for inequity is great, and the factors that influence that potential are numerous. How can we even begin to remedy the situation? How can an individual librarian or group of librarians influence the world about us and improve access for the disadvantaged? The following steps will set us on the path toward abolishing inequities of access.
• Cease to take inequities for granted.
• Understand the strengths and the limitations of technology so that we can use the former and learn to deal with the latter.
• Understand and analyze the barriers to access and assign them to the following categories:
• those over which we have control
• those that we can play a role in remedying
• those that are outside our control but which we can mitigate
• those that are very difficult for us to do anything about
• those that are impossible to change
• Organize within our institutions and professional organizations to work systematically on reducing inequities.
• Keep going so that one barrier at a time is reduced or eliminated.
• Make equity of access a cardinal principle of all innovations and programs.
The first step in this program is a matter of principles and priorities—and a step that is more difficult, ironically, for those who work in libraries in which equity of access is of lesser immediacy. For those librarians in the trenches, faced daily with inequities, the principle of equity is an inevitable part of daily working life. A children’s librarian in a poor rural area is confronted by inequity daily when she deals with children who cannot read, who work in the fields with their parents, who may have an imperfect command of English, or who regard a mandated trip to the library as an inconvenience. However, even university libraries are often situated in far-from-affluent communities and serve the members of the wider community as well as those in academe. It is difficult for me to imagine a librarian who could function well in any library while remaining unconcerned about inequity of access. One does not need to be a revolutionary insurrectionist to advocate the removal of all barriers to effective library use.
I think that, in the early days, many people—even many librarians—thought that technology would be the great leveler, that it would enable us to give equitable library service to even the most remote user, and that it would, somehow, make up for deficiencies in funding of library services to the disadvantaged. There can be no doubt that technology can help if the following conditions can be met:
• There is universal online access.
• Everyone has online skills.
• The technologically advanced library is accessible.
• Everyone is trained in information competence and critical thinking.
• Libraries can organize to provide services to distant users.
• Technology is integrated with—and not a substitute for—other library resources and services.
It is a fact of contemporary life that every library and schoolroom should provide online access. Now that we have achieved it in almost all cases, there are still questions to be asked and answered:
• Is the provision of online access always backed up by freely available and knowledgeable professional and technical assistance?
• Will a schoolroom equipped with modem computers with high-speed online access compensate for a “library” consisting of twenty-five-year-old books and with no librarian?
• If you are a child or a less-mobile adult public library user, what good is online access in every library if your branch library closed two years ago?
• Even if there is easy access for knowledgeable users, what about all the recorded knowledge and information that is either not available online and/or is better than anything available online?
None of these questions is easy to answer, and their implications are ominous. It is common for those who can implement public policy at all levels to simply install computers and walk away—declaring a victory and going home. How can we explain away a world in which, despite near universal online access, levels of literacy and education continue to decline inexorably? Is it possible that such a state of affairs is because of near-universal online access? There is a natural human tendency to settle for what you have, and we could hardly blame a distant learner or a teacher in a rural school for settling for whatever can be found online in the absence of books and other traditional library resources. In addition, there is an obvious seductiveness about online clicking, flash, and speed and the ability to download what is discovered instantly. This is especially so when compared with the more arduous task of sustained reading and the thought processes it induces. An old gibe about education—that it is “the transfer of information from textbook to notebook without going through human minds”—is daily being recast as “the downloading of online texts and images into term papers without passing through human minds.”
I have stressed the importance of providing assistance to library users using online resources. Such assistance is especially important as a means of overcoming the passive acceptance of anything that is available online, not least because of the lack of ability to know what is available only in books and other tangible library resources. As well as helping users in the library and in the schoolroom, we should be aware of what has been called “the virtual patron” and the grouping of those library users into “virtual communities.” As one writer puts it:
These virtual communities require the services and resources of various academic support units much in the same way as traditional campus communities. In order to remain relevant within this milieu, academic libraries are changing rapidly and being transformed to meet the changing needs of the evolving academic communities they serve. To that end, libraries are increasingly providing services and support to virtual patrons, by facilitating access to and navigation of electronic resources and providing value-added support services that optimize effective use of these resources.4
Libraries have been giving assistance to distant users at least since the invention of the telephone (or earlier, if you think of postal reference service). However, there are particular and difficult characteristics of online users: they expect the response to be as quick and easy as the request; they pose complex questions that require numerous iterations and interactions (a frustrating process); and they often require technical support and advice that the library or individual librarian may not be able to give. The latter may not be a simple matter of providing only library-related answers. Even if the library’s personnel are prepared to answer any questions about software and systems, a user’s level of technical knowledge may be so low as to make communication difficult or impossible.
Then there is the perennial question of monetary and human resources. As remote access to library resources and services increases, so will the demands of the virtual patrons. Most libraries will not have new money for new staff to meet those demands and will be back to the same old “reallocation of resources”—another example of technological change diverting staff time from “traditional” services that may be no less important than the new service.
The crucial factors in the third step toward abolishing inequities of access are careful surveying and analysis, beginning with your own library. The jargon of management and planning includes the useful (if pompous) phrase “environmental scan.” That concept is valuable to the librarian who is serious about increasing equity of access. The problems are well on their way to being delineated when you begin by looking around your library and thinking about the factors that lead to inequity of access. It is a truism that defining problems is halfway to solving them, but one of the characteristics of truisms is that they are true. It is also important to conceptualize the process of delineation as a series of concentric circles, beginning with issues over which the library has a high degree of control and ending with issues that are produced by major social forces and over which the library has little or no control.
Let us begin in the library and look at some of the intangible barriers to access for those who are actually there. I have written earlier in this book of the importance of bibliographic control systems to use of the library. Just as an up-to-date, user-friendly, internally coherent, standardized, and accessible online system is an invaluable aid to library users, a system that lacks one or more of those qualities may present insuperable barriers to effective use of the library. The library has almost complete control over its own online bibliographic system and, therefore, can remove or mitigate barriers in and to that system. The online system of today is also a gateway to a variety of other resources, from the relatively orderly world of indexes, abstracts, and indexed full-text databases to the disorderly world of cyberspace. Obviously the library lacks the control over those resources that it has over its own database, but it can reduce barriers to use by designing or deploying easily usable interfaces and “help” capabilities.
The question of access to the library’s online system is also, of course, affected by the physical world. How many public terminals should a library have? One answer is: enough so that anyone can have instant access to a terminal at any time. Few libraries of any size come anywhere near that situation, and most university and large public libraries have dealt for some years with the problem of waiting lists for terminals. Now that almost all libraries are offering online access, use of terminals is increasing apace, and even small libraries have to cope with more would-be users than terminals at peak times. Perhaps the wide availability of smartphones and tablets will solve one part of this aspect of access.
How easy is it for library users to gain access to your online system from their homes or elsewhere outside the library? This may be outside the library’s control, but it is hardly likely that someone experiencing difficulty in being a virtual library user is going to blame anyone but the library. Therefore, it behooves us to work as best we can to make remote access to our systems and resources as easy and reliable as possible. This brings up the important and often overlooked question of the public relations aspect of equity and ease of access. Just as a library that is closed when it is expected to be open can be a PR disaster, so can a foiled expectation of access to and ease of remote use of the library’s systems.
A poor online system and a good online system to which remote access is difficult or impossible are intangible barriers to access. A library building can also contain tangible barriers, and a good survey of the physical plant from the point of view of all users can yield some surprising and correctable results. Many of the features of a modern library—braille tags on elevators, devices for the partially sighted and the deaf, wheelchair ramps, and wheelchair-accessible workstations—are among the more obvious enhancers of access. There are more subtle barriers: size and layout of furniture at service points, signs that use library jargon that is not understood by the bulk of library users, confusing arrangement of materials, poor wording of interfaces, and many others. Such things can often be discerned only by those who can put themselves in the place of all library users and see the library from all their different points of view.
That last—seeing the library anew—may be the most difficult approach to removing barriers to access within the library, but it is undoubtedly the most productive. What does an academic library really look like to a first-generation student whose first language is not English? Do nonlibrarians know what to do when offered the choice between searching in “browse” or “keyword” mode? Remember that the vast majority of library users use our systems without ever asking for assistance—even when they know they need some assistance.
All libraries exist in specific environments—the institution or community that they serve. They also live in the wider world—the society of the town, region, state, and country in which they are situated. In an era of globalization, those societies include continents and, indeed, the whole world. There are forces in our localities, countries, and the world as a whole that influence our work and the people we serve. Some of those (e.g., literacy, education, scholarly communication, and information technology) are areas in which we can exert some influence, especially if we act in concert. Others (e.g., Big Technology, the infotainment industry, and federal education policy) are beyond our powers. Still others (e.g., copyright and intellectual property) are insoluble by anyone. If we are to work seriously and effectively on increasing equity of access, we must have the wisdom to distinguish among these types of external forces and to concentrate on those that we can change and affect.
I am convinced that the only answer to the equity of access issue—once it is defined and analyzed as set out above—is a concerted multiyear effort in which all libraries and librarians participate. Such a campaign should deal with all the dimensions of access (technological and otherwise), should be politically smart and effective, should use all modern means of persuasion (including advertising and PR), and should go through continuing cycles of proposal, work, achievement, analysis, and evaluation. It should seek to involve librarians from all kinds of libraries, the institutions and communities they serve, and politicians and other public policy experts at all levels—local, state, and federal.
Here is how I see a campaign like this working. ALA should begin by declaring equity of access to be its major external priority. (I use the latter term, as ALA must be effective on two fronts simultaneously: serving its membership and addressing the role of libraries in society.) It should follow that declaration by convening a broad-based Convention on Equity of Access to define the issues and priorities and then to work out a plan of action through a variety of librarian and nonlibrarian task forces and commissions. These latter would be charged with specific areas of inequity (e.g., literacy and language skills; technology and lack of technological competence; rural library service; the correlations among poverty, education, and library use; library service to the old and the young; diversity issues). Their work product would be white papers delineating each issue and recommending priorities for action. Those would be widely disseminated and discussed in a variety of forums (town meetings devoted to specific aspects of the problem, webinars, teleconferences, and so on). Those discussions would lead to the formulation of a grand plan of action to be promulgated by a second Convention on Equity of Access (which, like the first, would be comprised of both librarians and other interested parties). At the end of what would probably be a two-year process, ALA would have a multidimensional master plan that could be advanced on several fronts. The unwinding of the process would be accompanied by a public relations campaign aimed at communicating the enduring value of libraries to society. That PR campaign would first make the point of the value of libraries and then build on and enhance that message with reports on the work of the equity of access campaign and the ways in which librarians are working together on many issues to bring the benefits of library service to all.
This proposed national campaign would consist primarily of the articulation of many local efforts in many areas. It cannot be stressed too often that, as with many other social movements, equity of access to library resources and services will be advanced step-by-step by individual librarians and libraries as barriers are identified and removed or mitigated—sometimes across the nation, sometimes as the result of local action involving very few people. ALA and individual librarians can supply leadership, and a well-conducted campaign can supply inspiration; but the struggle will be most effective library by library as we work collectively and individually to reach the dream of a world in which library resources and services are freely available to all. That dream should inform all our actions—not just those that are part of the national campaign, but everything we do as librarians and every enhancement to library service that we make.
Notes
1. Stonehouse, John. “Spirit of the stacks.” New scientist (March 20, 1999) page 47.
2. American Library Association. “Equity of access.” www.ala.org/advocacy/access/equityofaccess (consulted August 29, 2014).
3. Barker, Denise. “On the outside looking in.” APLIS, volume 24, issue 1 (March 2011) pages 9–16.
4. Moyo, Lesley M. “The virtual patron.” Science & technology libraries, volume 25, issues 1–2 (2004) pages 185–209.