Librarians’ Activities in Relation to Media Monopoly

Abstract

From the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, there was a active subgroup of the ALA Social Responsibilities Round Table called the Alternatives in Print Task Force (later the Alternative Media Task Force) that was concerned with the influence of media conglomerates on library collections, as well as on the reading public’s appetite for books and its beliefs about the world. This group (AIP for short) saw media concentration and the market-based media system as an intellectual freedom issue because it effectively limits the diversity of library collections insofar as those collections are shaped by the industry’s marketing efforts and publishing choices.