Progressive Librarians Guild

Progressive Librarian  

Language	English
Publication details
Publisher	Progressive Librarians Guild
Frequency	Biannual
Indexing
ISSN	1052-5726

The Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG) was founded in New York City in January 1990 by librarians concerned with the library profession's "rapid drift into dubious alliances with business and the information industry, and into complacent acceptance of service to an unquestioned political, economic and cultural status quo," according to the organization's statement of purpose. The PLG addresses issues especially relating to librarianship and human rights.

The Progressive Librarians Guild publishes the journal The Progressive Librarian, a forum for critical perspectives in librarianship and information studies. The journal features articles, book reviews, bibliographies, reports, and documents. The first issue of Progressive Librarian (PL), published in the summer of 1990 on the heels of the founding of PLG, was given its title by Sanford Berman who exclaimed that the journal of PLG could have no other title than Progressive Librarian (the subtitle, A Journal of Critical Studies and Progressive Politics in Librarianship, came later in 1998 with issue #14). The first issue was to be a contribution to the debate taking place within the American Library Association (ALA) in which the upper ranks of power in ALA were attempting to overturn the association's official support of the cultural boycott against apartheid institutions in South Africa. An index for 1990-1999 was published in 2007.

The Guild annually bestows the Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize to library and information science students attending a graduate level program in the United States or Canada who submit a paper based on an aspect of the social responsibilities of librarians, libraries, or librarianship. Papers related to archivists, archives, and archival work are also eligible.

The Guild sponsors the blog Union Library Workers and publishes an annual review of librarians and labor in its journal. The Progressive Librarian article, "Collective Bargaining is a Human Right," summarized librarian involvement in 2011 public sector union protests to defend collective bargaining in Wisconsin.

The Guild sponsors a discussion list, PLGnet.