Who decides the attitudes, policies and actions of libraries?
It depends on who you ask. Librarians will proudly tell you that, being professionals, they make independent judgments based on sound, ethical principles. They will flaunt the infamous Library Bill of Rights (adopted 1948; revised 1961, 1967 and 1980) to prove it. The sad truth is that librarians have often been caught between their professional principles and nonprofessional antagonists. One type of antagonist is the library board member/politician seeking to gain easy publicity or to win votes at the expense of the library, its staff or its patrons. The other type of antagonist is the narrow-minded patron who insists that his/her opinion (on policy, book selection, hiring, etc.) is decisive because it is his/her library (this particularly is a problem in tax-supported and public libraries). See, Family Friendly Libraries, http://www.fflibraries.org/ and the article: Schweinsburg, Jane D. “Family Friendly Libraries vs. the American Library Association” _Journal of Information Ethics_
