Introduction

We are getting very close now. The peak of Ideology is within reach. It will take just one more hard push to get there. But the last mile is always the hardest. Dangers lie ahead. There will be false paths that lead to dead ends. Some of these will be signposted ‘neutral’, ‘apolitical’, ‘classless’ and ‘ideology-free’ because that is what we have been socially and professionally conditioned to believe about public libraries. We are like the two fish that were swimming along together one day when another fish came by and said, ‘The water is nice today.’ The two fish carried on swimming a little way and then stopped and looked at each other in bewilderment: one of them said ‘What the hell is water?’ That, in a nutshell, is Ideology. We can't see, touch, hear or smell it, but it has a constant impact on our daily lives. We are programmed from birth to believe certain ‘truths’, whether that is ‘capitalism is better than communism’ or ‘public libraries have nothing to do with Ideology.’ This makes it very challenging to write about Ideology and public libraries. For most people, these words don't belong in the same sentence, never mind being the subject of a whole book. You should hold this thought in your mind as you reach for the peak. At some point you may throw your hands up in the air in frustration and say, ‘but what has all this politics got to do with libraries?’ or ‘I can't see the library because the politics are getting in the way.’ But, as Marshall McLuhan said ‘The medium (library) is the message (politics)’. At first, this concept might seem vague and is indeed a lot to grasp. But understanding the meaning behind these words can revolutionise the way we think about public libraries.