Some library professionals have had it with ALA. They've launched a competing organization, Association of Library Professionals: https://alplibraries.org/. Their homepage says, "Help advance, promote, and defend the values upon which librarianship and modern enlightened civilization stand - institutional neutrality, open inquiry, individual liberty, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and intellectual freedom." I wish them well. Many new medical and scientific associations have been launched for similar reasons.
Remember seemingly minor things can be particularly insidious. This none sense about changing birds names to promote something or another that we’re all supposed to agree is especially virtuous diminishes historical memory and breeds confusion. If a bird had a name that had a racial slur in it, I can see the point. But that is not what’s going on. It’s more like, we must rename the John Smith Warbler the Rocky Warbler because we did research and found out John Smith , who no one has ever heard of, was in the Confederate Army. So we rename the bird, no one can remember what it’s called anymore and John Smith who no one can remember any way is thoroughly erased and people feel much better now.Talk about moral grandstanding, virtucratic nonesense. You’ve probably heard there was a push to rename The Audubon Society because it was discovered- although it was always known- that Audubon was a slaveholder and in some respects not an example of saintly wokeness.So the one man who probably did more in America to promote interest in bird watching and serious interest in birds besides being a brilliant visual chronicler of them ( his visual work is beautiful), should be erased and maybe the society could be called The Virtuous If Blind Avian Watchers Society .
There was a time in my youthful mind that I believed establishments of every kind were unmovable edifices, dedicated to a dull and dusty consensus. If only. Today they have in a mad rush sacrificed their credibility and their standing as gatekeepers. There's a kind of fever as the woolly and the wacky embrace the woolly and the wacky.
Some library professionals have had it with ALA. They've launched a competing organization, Association of Library Professionals: https://alplibraries.org/. Their homepage says, "Help advance, promote, and defend the values upon which librarianship and modern enlightened civilization stand - institutional neutrality, open inquiry, individual liberty, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and intellectual freedom." I wish them well. Many new medical and scientific associations have been launched for similar reasons.
Remember seemingly minor things can be particularly insidious. This none sense about changing birds names to promote something or another that we’re all supposed to agree is especially virtuous diminishes historical memory and breeds confusion. If a bird had a name that had a racial slur in it, I can see the point. But that is not what’s going on. It’s more like, we must rename the John Smith Warbler the Rocky Warbler because we did research and found out John Smith , who no one has ever heard of, was in the Confederate Army. So we rename the bird, no one can remember what it’s called anymore and John Smith who no one can remember any way is thoroughly erased and people feel much better now.Talk about moral grandstanding, virtucratic nonesense. You’ve probably heard there was a push to rename The Audubon Society because it was discovered- although it was always known- that Audubon was a slaveholder and in some respects not an example of saintly wokeness.So the one man who probably did more in America to promote interest in bird watching and serious interest in birds besides being a brilliant visual chronicler of them ( his visual work is beautiful), should be erased and maybe the society could be called The Virtuous If Blind Avian Watchers Society .
There was a time in my youthful mind that I believed establishments of every kind were unmovable edifices, dedicated to a dull and dusty consensus. If only. Today they have in a mad rush sacrificed their credibility and their standing as gatekeepers. There's a kind of fever as the woolly and the wacky embrace the woolly and the wacky.
Thank you for your update on the American Bible Society's Museum's future.
Really enjoyed your interview and take on the ALA.