Most Interesting Question: "Can the public libraries' failure to reach great masses of people be attributed so readily to the assumed elitist character of libraries and librarians?" (Dain, 265).
This is an idea I have never bought into. Whether or not you walk into a library is your choice. Even if I was a poor immigrant, I would not allow supposed elitism to prevent me from learning (if that is indeed what I felt like doing at the time). Even if libraries were unpopular among the working class (as evidenced by Free For All), if I do not let my life be dictated by social pressures now, I do not really see how you could blame an elitist streak on a public institution or its librarians. "They [the librarians] were imperfect, class ridden, unphilosophical, pragmatic human beings who seldom thought through their own ideological positions and who had mixed feelings and motives" (Dain, 264). I can certainly sympathize with that.
As for Harris's idea that librarians abandoned their neutrality, who said that they necessarily had to have neutrality? Harris has a right to make trouble if he wants, but he does not make a lot of sense. If the immigrants made "good use of library" in spite of the supposedly elitist librarians, then it's hard for me to really see much of a problem with that. In the end, I suppose I appreciate Harris's muckracking as the library profession does seem to be a bit too innocuous relative to other professions.
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