American Library History

American Library History
Author: Donald G. Davis
Publisher: Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO
Total Pages: 504
Release: 1989
Genre: History
ISBN:

Part of Our Lives

Part of Our Lives
Author: Wayne A. Wiegand
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190248009

Challenges conventional thinking and top-down definitions, instead drawing on the library user's perspective to argue that the public library's most important function is providing commonplace reading materials and public space. Challenges a professional ethos about public libraries and their responsibilities to fight censorship and defend intellectual freedom. Demonstrates that the American public library has been (with some notable exceptions) a place that welcomed newcomers, accepted diversity, and constructed community since the end of the 19th century. Shows how stories that cultural authorities have traditionally disparaged- i.e. books that are not "serious"- have often been transformative for public library users.

Encyclopedia of Library History

Encyclopedia of Library History
Author: Wayne A. Wiegand
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 740
Release: 2015-01-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1135787506

First Published in 1994. This book focuses on the historical development of the library as an institution. Its contents assume no single theoretical foundation or philosophical perspective but instead reflect the richly diverse opinions of its many contributors. This text is intended to serve as a reference tool for undergraduate and graduate students interested in library history, for library school educators whose teaching requires knowledge of the historical development of library institutions, services, and user groups, and for practicing library professionals.

The Freedom to Read

The Freedom to Read
Author: American Library Association
Publisher:
Total Pages: 16
Release: 1953
Genre: Libraries
ISBN:

Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries

Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries
Author: Sean D. Moore
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2019-02-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192573411

Early American libraries stood at the nexus of two transatlantic branches of commerce—the book trade and the slave trade. Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries bridges the study of these trades by demonstrating how Americans' profits from slavery were reinvested in imported British books and providing evidence that the colonial book market was shaped, in part, by the demand of slave owners for metropolitan cultural capital. Drawing on recent scholarship that shows how participation in London cultural life was very expensive in the eighteenth century, as well as evidence that enslavers were therefore some of the few early Americans who could afford to import British cultural products, the volume merges the fields of the history of the book, Atlantic studies, and the study of race, arguing that the empire-wide circulation of British books was underwritten by the labour of the African diaspora. The volume is the first in early American and eighteenth-century British studies to fuse our growing understanding of the material culture of the transatlantic text with our awareness of slavery as an economic and philanthropic basis for the production and consumption of knowledge. In studying the American dissemination of works of British literature and political thought, it claims that Americans were seeking out the forms of citizenship, constitutional traditions, and rights that were the signature of that British identity. Even though they were purchasing the sovereignty of Anglo-Americans at the expense of African-Americans through these books, however, some colonials were also making the case for the abolition of slavery.

Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America

Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America
Author: Christine Pawley
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0299293238

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.

Narratives of (Dis)Enfranchisement

Narratives of (Dis)Enfranchisement
Author: Tracey Overbey
Publisher: American Library Association
Total Pages: 89
Release: 2022-08-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0838949924

This first Special Report in a two-volume set on Black and African Americans’ experiences in libraries provides an overview of their historical exclusion from libraries and educational institutions in the United States, also exploring the ways in which this legacy is manifest in our contemporary context. A compelling call to action, it will serve as the beginning of many conversations in which librarianship reckons with its racist past to move towards a more equitable future. Still a predominantly white profession, librarianship has a legacy of racial discrimination, and it is essential that we face the ways that race impacts how we meet the needs of diverse user communities. Identifying and acknowledging implicit and learned bias is a necessary step toward transforming not only our professional practice but also our scholarship, assessment, and evaluation practices. From this Special Report, readers will learn the hidden history of Africa’s contributions to libraries and educational institutions, which are often omitted from K-12, higher education, and library school curricula; engage with the racist legacies of libraries as well as contemporary scholarship related to Black and African American users’ experiences with libraries; be introduced to frameworks and theories that can help to identify and unpack the role of race in librarianship and in library users’ experiences; and garner practical takeaways to bring to their own views and practice of librarianship.

America's Greatest Library

America's Greatest Library
Author: John Young Cole
Publisher: Giles
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781911282136

A new visual history of the Library of Congress from its creation in 1800 to the present day.