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The Union Library Workers blog is a project of the Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG), an organization devoted to the open exchange of radical views on library and information issues.
You can also follow them on Twitter at #unionlibrarian.

The background image  on the blog is a 2008 photo of faculty and librarians of the Windsor University Faculty Association.

PLG Statement of Purpose:

Progressive Librarians Guild was formed in New York City on January 1990 by a group of librarians concerned with our profession’s rapid drift into dubious alliances with business and the information industry, and into complacent acceptance of service to an unquestioned political, economic and cultural status quo. See the 1997 Letter from Mark Rosenzweig to PLG members describing changes in the organization that had come about up to that point.

PLG reaffirmed, significantly, that the development of public libraries was initially spurred by popular sentiment which for one reason or another held that real democracy requires an enlightened citizenry, and that society should provide all people with the means for free intellectual development. Current trends in librarianship, however, assert that the library is merely a neutral institutional mediator in the information marketplace and a facilitator of a value-neutral information society of atomized information consumers.

A progressive librarianship demands the recognition of the idea that libraries for the people has been one of the principal anchors of an extended free public sphere which makes an independent democratic civil society possible, something which must be defended and extended. This is partisanship, not neutrality.

Members of PLG do not accept the sterile notion of the neutrality of librarianship, and we strongly oppose the commodification of information which turns the ‘information commons‘ into privatized, commercialized zones. We will help to dissect the implications of these powerful trends, and fight their anti-democratic tendencies.

PLG recognizes that librarians are situated as information workers, communications workers, and education workers, as well as technical workers. Like workers in every sector, our work brings us up against both economic and political issues. Cataloging, indexing, acquisitions policy and collection development, the character of reference services, library automation, library management, and virtually every other library issue embody political value choices. PLG members aim to make these choices explicit, and to draw their political conclusions.

The Progressive Librarians Council was the antecedant of today’s Progressive Librarians Guild. PLG’s Progressive Librarian journal includes an article about the Progressive Librarians Council and its Founders.

Related articles

• Around the Web: The Academic Librarianship — A Crisis or an Opportunity? symposium [Confessions of a Science Librarian] (scienceblogs.com)
• Project Rescue- Our Public Library and ALA Social Responsibility Round Table (sustainablelibraries.wordpress.com)
• A-z Library (plgatsimmons.wordpress.com)
• Libraries and Labor Unions: a Panel Discussion (plgatsimmons.wordpress.com)

Since 1969  the Social Responsibility Round Table (SRRT) unit within the American Library Association has been tasked with responsiblity “to establish progressive priorities not only for the Association, but also for the entire profession. Concern for human and economic rights was an important element in the founding of SRRT and remains an urgent concern today. SRRT believes that libraries and librarians must recognize and help solve social problems and inequities in order to carry out their mandate to work for the common good and bolster democracy (source).” Members of the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) provided a home within ALA for progressive librarians, library workers, and supporters who agree to promote social responsibility as a core value of librarianship. SRRT September 2011 Newsletter.

Open Gardens Toronto is a uniques concept of opening gardens during weekday evening from May to August (weekends in September in October) providing not only  opportunities to enjoy distinctive creation of each gardener but also having a gardener on premise to answer questions.

The Open Gardens Toronto Initiative is not a tour but a program and the entrance fees are contributed for groups who are working to change lives of girls and women.

List of gardens open by date.

Related Articles

• Prospect House – Open Gardens 2011 (southmarston.org.uk)

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• USA Today article identifies a trend in the USA public libraries that “are becoming more hospitable to the homeless by hosting social-service agencies”, organizing book clubs, computer classes and movie matinees .

• Poverty in America features a video Library Should Welcome the Homeless by Shannon Moriarty who worked in various homeless shelters and service organizations around the country, and is a graduate student studying housing and urban policy at Tufts University.

Notable “homeless inclusion” library initiatives:

• Charlotte Mecklenburg Library in North Carolina: Angela Craig (“One thing that I love about the library profession is that we serve everyone, we are inclusive, we pioneer good customer service, and librarians are usually up to something cool”) started a book club for the homeless providing library orientation tours by security staff and computer tutors for homeless patrons (see also: Library Case Study: Charlotte Mecklenburg Library by Julie Bowers)

• The Alachua County Library District, Florida hosts Monday movies  for the homeless, keeps a book collection at a shelter and opened a social-service center at a branch,“The Library Partnership” –A Neighborhood, One-Stop Resource Center. The space provides a rotating network of approximately 30 agencies dedicated to child welfare. ACLD director Sol Hirsch came up with the idea while attending an October 2008 meeting with the Esther Tibbs, area director of the Florida Department of Family and Children’s Services. The Alachua County Library is the winner of the Library of the Year Award 2010 issued by the Florida Library Association.

• San Francisco Public Library hired social worker Leah Esguerra  to work full-time at the downtown library  and handle referrals of homeless patrons to social-service agencies. More than 150 patrons have been referred to social services since, and libraries are becoming genuine “community living rooms“.
• Providing library services to homeless at-risk teens in the the Toronto Public Library system

• Further perspective on homelessness and public libraries

Related Articles

• 12 Ways Libraries Are Good for the Country | American Libraries Magazine (americanlibrariesmagazine.org)
• We Must All Serve the Disconnected (libraryjournal.com)
• Doomed? Victoria’s public libraries are booming (theglobeandmail.com)
• Public libraries provide refuge for the homeless (dispatch.com)
• 12 Ways Libraries Are Good for the Country | American Libraries Magazine (americanlibrariesmagazine.org)