Venezuelan National Library Battles "Imperialism" of Library of Congress

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 4/15/2008

• Calls LC enemy of libraries
• FCL sees parallels with Cuba
• LC says it is "antithesis of imperialism"

Has historian Fernando Báez, director of Venezuela's National Library, declared war on the Library of Congress (LC), as the Friends of Cuban Libraries (FCL) stated in a press release last week? Well, not quite war, but, yes, a “battle against cultural imperialism,” according to the Spanish-language statement on the National Library’s web site.

The National Library, Báez said, will "assume a leading role in Latin America and the world because the U.S. Library of Congress has been converted into one of history's greatest enemies of libraries." The Venezuelan library’s “social revolutionary commitment" will involve advice to Latin American libraries and a national reading campaign. Báez also plans "popular and community libraries," a tactic that Friends of Cuban Libraries—which says it simply supports intellectual freedom in Cuba but critics allege is linked to anti-Castro groups—suggests borrows from Cuba.

And what does LC think of the charges? Spokesman Matt Raymond replied by e-mail: “The purposes of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, to provide resources to educators, to expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research. Nations that share these goals will benefit from a remarkable body of knowledge that will be made available to people everywhere around the globe. It is Jeffersonian in its truest sense, and it is the antithesis of imperialism.”