Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America

by Christine Pawley (Editor), Louise S. Robbins (Editor)

Overview

For well over one hundred years, libraries open to the public have played a crucial part in fostering in Americans the skills and habits of reading and writing, by routinely providing access to standard forms of print: informational genres such as newspapers, pamphlets, textbooks, and other reference books, and literary genres including poetry, plays, and novels. Public libraries continue to have an extraordinary impact; in the early twenty-first century, the American Library Association reports that there are more public library branches than McDonald's restaurants in the United States. Much has been written about libraries from professional and managerial points of view, but less so from the perspectives of those most intimately involved—patrons and librarians.             Drawing on circulation records, patron reviews, and other archived materials, Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America underscores the evolving roles that libraries have played in the lives of American readers. Each essay in this collection examines a historical circumstance related to reading in libraries. The essays are organized in sections on methods of researching the history of reading in libraries; immigrants and localities; censorship issues; and the role of libraries in providing access to alternative, nonmainstream publications. The volume shows public libraries as living spaces where individuals and groups with diverse backgrounds, needs, and desires encountered and used a great variety of texts, images, and other media throughout the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299293239
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	09/13/2013
Series:	Print Culture History in Modern America
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Christine Pawley and Louise S. Robbins have both served as professor and director of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Pawley's publications include Reading Places: Literacy, Democracy, and the Public Library in Cold War America. Robbins is author of The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown: Civil Rights, Censorship, and the American Library.

Table of Contents

Preface   Introduction Christine Pawley   Part 1: Methods and Evidence Main Street Public Library: Community Spaces and Reading Places in the Rural Heartland Wayne A. Wiegand Reading Library Records: Constructing and Using the "What Middletown Read Database" Frank Felsenstein, John Straw, Katharine Leigh, and James J. Connolly "Story Develops Badly Could Not Finish": Member Book Reviews at the Boston Athenaeum in the 1920s Ross Harvey "A Search for Better Ways into the Future": The Library of Congress and Its Users in the Interwar Period Jane Aikin   Part 2: Public Libraries, Readers, and Localities Going to "America": Italian Neighborhoods and the Newark Free Public Library, 1900–1920 Ellen M. Pozzi "A Liberal and Dignified Approach": The John Toman Branch of the Chicago Public Library and the Making of Americans, 1927–1940 Joyce M. Latham Counter Culture: The World as Viewed from Inside the Indianapolis Public Library, 1944–1956 Jean Preer   Part 3: Intellectual Freedom Censorship in the Heartland: Eastern Iowa Libraries during World War I Julia Skinner Obscenity in Iowa: Locating the Library in the Non-Library Censorship of the 1950s Joan Bessman Taylor "Is Your Library Family Friendly?" Family Friendly Libraries and the Pro-Family Movement Loretta M. Gaffney The Challengers of West Bend: An Institutional Approach Emily Knox   Part 4: Librarians and the Alternative Press Meta-Radicalism: The Alternative Press by and for Activist Librarians Alycia Sellie From the Underground to the Stacks and Beyond: Girl Zines, Zine Librarians, and the Importance of Social and Textual Circulation Janice A. Radway   Contributors

Editorial Reviews

Part of a series overseen by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's (UW-M) Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, this volume focuses on the U.S. reading public since 1876. The essays, compiled by Pawley and Robbins, who have both served as professor and director of the School of Library and Information Studies at UW-M, are in four sections that travel in approximate chronology through topics surrounding readers' advisory and paper trail, the immigrant experience, intellectual freedom, and the alternative press in America's public institutions. Through analysis of library records in libraries ranging from the Library of Congress to Midwestern main street public institutions, the essays cover a number of regions and time frames, meaning that any particular reader may be interested in some more than others. However, there are also larger topics of general interest to the profession and to social historians. Highlights include the opening essay on early public libraries, the focus on the role of the library in immigrant life at the turn of the 20th century, the analysis of the 1992 formation of "Family Friendly Libraries" in retaliation against the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights, and the discussion of the development of girl zine librarianship. VERDICT Recommended for librarians and print culture enthusiasts; the content ranges widely enough to pique varied interests.—Jewell Anderson, Savannah Country Day Sch. Lib., GA

Library Journal

"The focus on libraries not as cold, impersonal institutions engaged in promulgating top-down policies but rather as spaces populated by people with diverse backgrounds, needs, and values is what makes this volume valuable."—Joan Shelley Rubin, University of Rochester


“Recommended for librarians and print culture enthusiasts; the content ranges widely enough to pique varied interests.”—Library Journal



“This reader is especially gratified to see so many of the essays in this valuable collection infused with the insights of contemporary critical social theory.”—Library & Information History

From the Publisher