Who Are You to Doubt a Library Legend?
By Walt Crawford
American Libraries Columnist
Senior analyst, Research Libraries Group
Column for March 2002
On two or three occasions, I’ve been foolish enough to argue with a Library Legend, either in print or in a speech. With one exception, I’ve never heard directly from the Legends themselves—they’re above all that. But in the most recent case, I did receive a lengthy letter taking issue with everything in my argument and, along the way, using phrases such as “even a library legend like . . .” and assaulting my “suggestion that he, of all people, doesn’t understand library issues.”
I had been put in my place. Who was I to doubt a Library Legend?
My first internal response was to say just who I might be to doubt a Library Legend. Pull out my own horn and see what kind of solo I could blow, comparing the significance of published books and articles, accomplishments within the profession, dueling vitas at ten paces, and all that.
That’s the wrong response to this question. The right response is, I believe, another question:
“Who do I need to be?”
Failing to leave well enough alone
Let’s say you’re fresh out of library school or a practicing librarian who’s neither well known nor widely published. You can read, you can reason, you’re familiar with an issue or an area—and you see that something a Big Name says or writes doesn’t make sense. Should you consider pointing out that the Library Legend is off base?
Who are you to doubt a Library Legend? You believe that the Legend was wrong in this case and that you can demonstrate that error or make a strong counterargument. That should be enough.
It should be enough even if you haven’t published a dozen books or articles. Even if you’ve never given a keynote at a library conference. (Do enough of those things and you’re in danger of becoming a minor Library Legend yourself. More’s the pity.)
There are no infallible Library Legends, just as there are no infallible politicians, doctors, writers, auto mechanics, or Nobel Prize winners. No Library Legend knows every aspect of librarianship with equal authority. No Library Legend keeps up to date on every aspect of the field or understands all the issues surrounding every controversy.
No Library Legend deserves the awful fate of being above questioning or beyond doubt. If you’re beyond doubt, you’re also beyond relevance. If nobody questions your statements, you’re no longer part of any useful discussion.
That’s easy for me to say, but it wasn’t easy to do, at least not the first time I disagreed with conventional wisdom. As a practicing coward (at the time), I was careful to disassociate the ideas I disagreed with from those who asserted them. Why take on Big Names when I could take on their ideas in the abstract?
The problem with that solution is that you get accused of creating straw men. Still, it’s hard for me to insist that others should be more courageous than I was. Fortunately, many “new breed librarians” have that courage.
Stomping out the newcomers
One recent library-school graduate started a print quarterly with an ambitious name and set of goals. This person is a talented self-publicist. I disagree with much of what this person is doing. It would be ever so tempting to tear into the project and dismiss the librarian as some young punk who should mind her or his betters.
It would also be wrong, which is why I’m not mentioning the name of the librarian or the publication. This librarian brings a fresh approach to issues and deserves a chance to show the worth of that approach. This librarian also has as much right to question my statements as I have to question those of a true Library Legend.
Any Library Legend who never admits to error (or at least to gaps in knowledge and experience) is mistaken. When those mistakes appear in print or when a Legend doesn’t think things through thoroughly, you should feel free to point it out.
Who are you to doubt a Library Legend? A thinking, intelligent human being. Who else do you need to be?
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