I do feel very strongly that librarians should strive to collect fiction that’s unusual and non-commercial, introducing people to new ideas and methods of expression. But “high culture” is the wrong label for this mission. I remember being disappointed as an undergraduate to find that the generally wonderful Williamsburg, VA public library didn’t have any books by James Branch Cabell, an early fantasy author who studied at William and Mary. James Branch Cabell is well-regarded among those who study speculative fiction, but most people have never heard of him and fantasy is still not really “high culture.” He’s surely no Austen or Dickens or Woolf.

I think librarians and other curators can use the methods of critical assessment – is this aesthetically original? is this relevant to my community? does it have notable ideas? – without using terms like “hierarchy” or “high culture.” These terms are just so loaded with elitism and a disinterest in pop culture/subculture/counterculture that I don’t think they’re worth saving.

Non fiction resources are more when a librarian’s judgement comes in. Not about the topic they are including (while you may be a liberal librarian, you still need to balance out your collection with conservative view points), but rather if the information is valid and from a credible source.

Fiction is murkier because you’re not determining whether it’s accurate. You’re determining whether your demographic would read it. Will it circulate? Will it encourage people to come back and read more?

I had a prior career in newspaper which I think parallels library world so nicely. One of the biggest rules of news is giving people not only what they want to know , but also what they NEED to know. I’m not forcing you to read either. I’m merely making sure that my newspaper contains both. Much is same with the library. You need to make sure you balance what they want to read with what we think they should read. You can’t allow an imbalance to happen or else people will stop coming.

A few years ago I helped a middle-aged couple at the reference desk with a handful of questions. While I was looking things up for them, with a stack of graphic novels on the desk which I had just pulled off the shelves to check out to use in a presentation, they went on at length about the “subliteracy” of comics. I found it incredibly onoxious.

If we’re sticking with the food metaphor, maybe some people have allergies–I do. It’s an imperfect metaphor because no one will die from reading Virginia Woolf, even if s/he might want to, but what I’m getting at is that books, or even entire genres of books, may benefit one person more than another. In school I wasn’t ready for some of what I was assigned (The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Mrs. Dalloway), and was more than ready for a number of books my teachers didn’t assign (Slaughterhouse Five, Catch-22).

It’s possible (always possible) that I’ve misunderstood you, but it sounds like you’re assuming that the choices are whether to read something “high culture” (actual food) or whether to read something “low culture” (junk food and other foodlike substances).

From my experience working with reluctant readers, I’d have to say that the choice is more often between reading something fun and poppy and not reading anything at all. So maybe we should consider ourselves closer to waiters than doctors, and if we mention the specials after the patron has already ordered we should be prepared to be met with annoyance and/or exasperation.

You can do what you will with signage, displays, blog posts, brochures, and the myriad ways we market books to our patrons. We all do. But unless and until that patron asks me to intervene, they are entitled to make their own choices. Ranganathan’s second law, and all that there.

Here’s my counter question: what if you stocked a library entirely on the basis of patron demand for popular culture materials? Why would you need a librarian to run it? A paraprofessional or volunteer could do exactly the same thing. How is this any different than a basically government run bookstore?

I’d point out that the librarian’s judgment has already been interjected into the equation on the basis of acquisition decisions. Material exists on the shelf because someone along the way already decided to put it there. This is not a completely judgment free zone.

Where the ‘information is food’ analogy goes off the tracks is that there are no studies to say that a ‘poor’ information diet (such as reading poorly written literature) causes a reduction in mental acuity. On that point, I have to concede because I don’t have facts or figures to back it up. So, point taken.

I still think that the ‘information is food’ analogy is an interesting one and one that has some merit to it, even if it goes off the rails when talking about less-than-stellar prose. I do think that what people consume in terms of information matters, just as the TED presenter makes a joke about watching Fox News for a month straight. I do believe there is a need for a balanced diet (for lack of a better term) for news and opinion, but such a need might get a bit hazy when it comes to literature and entertainment.

I don’t see offering direction to something else as necessarily “patronizing and finger wagging” because of my multitude of encounters with people who are unaware of their full range of options. Too often these options are “hidden” by poor signage, poor catalog interfaces, and our sometimes arcane system of book management (either grouping books by genre or Dewey, pick your poison). We can split hairs over whether telling someone about different literature offerings is education or interference and I’m going to guess that the real determining factor is the motive behind such actions. The Devil is truly in the details: if I go by their criteria and their needs, I could omit something they might enjoy but didn’t know about or providing them with the right amount of customer service. If I go beyond their criteria and offer them something they may not have known about, I could be overstepping my bounds or introducing them to something new that they love and enjoy.