Intellectual Freedom and the Agnostic-Postmodernist View of Reading Effects

LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 63, No. 1, 2014 (“New Perspectives on Intellectual Freedom,” edited by Mark McCallon), pp. 11–26. © 2014 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois Abstract One of the more confusing aspects of contemporary librarianship is its support for collecting “all sides” in its institutions while, at the same time, arguing for the positive nature of reading for all. This article focuses two positions toward knowledge effects. One, the postmodernist view, is agnostic toward the effects of gaining new knowledge while the other, the traditional–modernist view, holds that the effects of new knowledge can be known and are inevitable. It is the postmodernist position that undergirds contemporary librarianship’s support for intellectual freedom.