Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
869
result(s) for
"Libraries and community United States History."
Sort by:
Part of our lives : a people's history of the American public library
\"Part of Our Lives challenges the conventional idea that public libraries are valuable mostly because they are essential to democracy. Instead, this book uses the voices of generations of public library users to argue that Americans have loved their libraries for the useful information they make accessible; the public spaces they provide; and the commonplace reading materials they supply that help users make sense of the world around them.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Part of our lives : a people's history of the American public library
Despite dire predictions in the late twentieth century that public libraries would not survive the turn of the millennium, their numbers have only increased. Two of three Americans frequent a public library at least once a year, and nearly that many are registered borrowers. Although library authorities have argued that the public library functions primarily as a civic institution necessary for maintaining democracy, generations of library patrons tell a different story. In Part of Our Lives, Wayne A. Wiegand delves into the heart of why Americans love their libraries. The book traces the history of the public library, featuring records and testimonies from as early as 1850. Rather than analyzing the words of library founders and managers, Wiegand listens to the voices of everyday patrons who cherished libraries. Drawing on newspaper articles, memoirs, and biographies, Part of Our Lives paints a clear and engaging picture of Americans who value libraries not only as civic institutions, but also as social spaces for promoting and maintaining community. Whether as a public space, a place for accessing information, or a home for reading material that helps patrons make sense of the world around them, the public library has a rich history of meaning for millions of Americans. From colonial times through the recent technological revolution, libraries have continuously adapted to better serve the needs of their communities. Wiegand goes on to demonstrate that, although cultural authorities (including some librarians) have often disparaged reading books considered not \"serious\" the commonplace reading materials users obtained from public libraries have had a transformative effect for many, including people like Ronald Reagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Oprah Winfrey. A bold challenge to conventional thinking about the American public library, Part of Our
Lives is an insightful look into one of America's most beloved cultural institutions.
eBook
Main Street public library : community places and reading spaces in the rural heartland, 1876-1956
In Main Street Public Library, eminent library historian Wayne Wiegand studies four emblematic small-town libraries in the Midwest from the late nineteenth century through the federal Library Service Act of 1956, and shows that these institutions served a much different purpose than is so often perceived. Rather than acting as neutral institutions that are vital to democracy, the libraries of Sauk Centre, Minnesota; Osage, Iowa; Rhinelander, Wisconsin; and Lexington, Michigan, were actually mediating community literary values and providing a public space for the construction of social harmony. These libraries, and the librarians who ran them, were often just as susceptible to the political and social pressures of their time as any other public institution.
eBook
Studying Community Librarianship through Historical Writings on Public Library Programming Activities: American, British, and Anglo-Scandinavian Perspectives
This paper offers a historical perspective on community librarianship, diving into historical writings on programs and programming activities in a public library context since the 1920s from an American, a British, and a Scandinavian perspective. The paper aims to inform the understanding of programs and programming activities, identifying the underlying objectives and ideologies that have shaped this central part of community librarianship. By employing a synoptic approach to the study of these texts, the paper bridges terminological and conceptual differences, encompassing the educational, cultural, social, and informational aspects of public library programming. Based on the literature studied, four main objectives are identified: inspirational, educational, recreational, and relational. Moreover, the paper highlights how librarians have played a central role in driving the development of these services, stressing the importance of the interests and motivation of individuals. Reflecting on how such activities have been subjects of value-based discussions within the library professional field for over a century, this paper offers new insights into community librarianship. As such, it constitutes foundational work for future research and discussions within this field of study.
Journal Article
Made in Newark
What does it mean to turn the public library or museum into a civic forum?Made in Newarkdescribes a turbulent industrial city at the dawn of the twentieth century and the ways it inspired the library's outspoken director, John Cotton Dana, to collaborate with industrialists, social workers, educators, and New Women.This is the story of experimental exhibitions in the library and the founding of the Newark Museum Associationùa project in which cultural literacy was intertwined with civics and consumption. Local artisans demonstrated crafts, connecting the cultural institution to the department store, school, and factory, all of which invoked the ideal of municipal patriotism. Today, as cultural institutions reappraise their relevance,Made in Newarkexplores precedents for contemporary debates over the ways the library and museum engage communities, define heritage in a multicultural era, and add value to the economy.
eBook
Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy
Intelligence work is in some ways like a newspaper or newsmagazine, in some like a business, in some like the research activity of a university; very little of it involves cloaks and daggers. All of it is important to national survival, and should be understood by the citizens of a democracy.
In this remarkable book, an able scholar, experienced in foreign intelligence, analyzes all of these varied aspects of what is known as \"high-level foreign positive intelligence.\" Illustrations are drawn from that branch, but the lessons apply to all intelligence, and in fact to all those phases of business, of journalism, and (most importantly) of scholarship, where the problem is to learn what has happened or will happen.
Originally published in 1966.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
eBook
Mitigating Bias in Metadata
Controlled vocabularies used in cultural heritage organizations (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) are a helpful way to standardize terminology but can also result in misrepresentation or exclusion of systemically marginalized groups. Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is one example of a widely used yet problematic controlled vocabulary for subject headings. In some cases, systemically marginalized groups are creating controlled vocabularies that better reflect their terminology. When a widely used vocabulary like LCSH and a controlled vocabulary from a marginalized community are both available as linked data, it is possible to incorporate the terminology from the marginalized community as an overlay or replacement for outdated or absent terms from more widely used vocabularies. This paper provides a use case for examining how the Homosaurus, an LGBTQ+ linked data controlled vocabulary, can provide an augmented and updated search experience to mitigate bias within a system that only uses LCSH for subject headings.
Journal Article
Keeping Dr. Charles Richard Drew’s legacy alive
The Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU) recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The university was established to honor Dr. Charles Richard Drew, a pioneer in blood banking. As a tribute to the legacy of CDU and Dr. Drew, the CDU Health Sciences Library examined how CDU is keeping Dr. Drew’s legacy alive.
Journal Article
Provisional Avant-Gardes
What would it mean to be avant-garde today? Arguing against the notion that the avant-garde is dead or confined to historically \"failed\" movements, this book offers a more dynamic and inclusive theory of avant-gardes that accounts for how they work in our present. Innovative in approach, Provisional Avant-Gardes focuses on the medium of the little magazine—from early Dada experiments to feminist, queer, and digital publishing networks—to understand avant-gardes as provisional and heterogeneous communities. Paying particular attention to neglected women writers, artists, and editors alongside more canonical figures, it shows how the study of little magazines can change our views of literary and art history while shedding new light on individual careers. By focusing on the avant-garde's publishing history and group dynamics, Sophie Seita also demonstrates a new methodology for writing about avant-garde practice across time, one that is applicable to other artistic and non-artistic communities and that speaks to contemporary practitioners as much as scholars. In the process, she addresses fundamental questions about the intersections of aesthetic form and politics and about what we consider to be literature and art.
eBook
“Tunnel Vision and Blind Spots” Reconsidered: Part of Our Lives (2015) as a Test Case
In 1999 Library Quarterly published the author’s article “Tunnel Vision and Blind Spots: What the Past Tells Us about the Present; Reflections on the Twentieth-Century History of American Librarianship.” In it he argued that library and information studies (LIS) research and discourse suffered from a narrow perspective that limited its ability to discern a wider range of contributions and roles libraries played in their host communities. In this follow-up article, by harnessing conclusions emanating from research for his new book, “Part of Our Lives”: A People’s History of the American Public Library (2015) as a test case, the author argues that LIS discourse and research continue to manifest tunnel vision and blind spots that limit librarianship’s ability to more deeply understand its present circumstances and more prudently prepare for its future.
Journal Article