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Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Pawley Article
I loved reading this article. It’s so exciting to find out about a local radical/ feminist who did so much in a field that I’m interested in. To borrow a term from class: it’s a good narrative.
What I liked about this article (which I also liked about the last Fain article) was that Pawley brought the discussion of the conflicting ideas the library into a very specific context. We talked in class about Biographies and the possibility that telling one person’s story may not do justice to larger themes but here Pawley really just frames the story of Wisconsin libraries with the efforts of Lutie Stearns.
I found the "Political Pluralism" section very interesting. I sympathize with Stearns’ wish that she, and the libraries, could stay out of partisan politics but politics aren’t staying out of the library and therefore one has to know how to work within the system. It was impressive that Stearns used advertising to such a great extent. It sounds simplistic but people won’t use a library if they don’t know its there or don’t know what it has to offer. This would especially be useful to advertise new collections, such as foreign language books, that were being bought at this time. The conversation that Hutchinson had with the rural storekeeper shows that even laypeople had overly idealistic beliefs about the reading “good books.”
In "Libraries for “the People” Pawley bring up the issue of whether collections should be built based on patron demand or a librarian’s discretion. This issue is seen in a new light when one considers the tax supported library versus the philanthropic gift library. With the tax supported library it is easy to argue that the tax payers should have a say in what they have access to because they own part of the collection. As far as the gift library is concerned the philanthropist who donates the money will have more control over what goes in to the library. If the philanthropist’s attitude is one of superiority it would be easy to see how that could translate into the mission and book collection of the library.
What I liked about this article (which I also liked about the last Fain article) was that Pawley brought the discussion of the conflicting ideas the library into a very specific context. We talked in class about Biographies and the possibility that telling one person’s story may not do justice to larger themes but here Pawley really just frames the story of Wisconsin libraries with the efforts of Lutie Stearns.
I found the "Political Pluralism" section very interesting. I sympathize with Stearns’ wish that she, and the libraries, could stay out of partisan politics but politics aren’t staying out of the library and therefore one has to know how to work within the system. It was impressive that Stearns used advertising to such a great extent. It sounds simplistic but people won’t use a library if they don’t know its there or don’t know what it has to offer. This would especially be useful to advertise new collections, such as foreign language books, that were being bought at this time. The conversation that Hutchinson had with the rural storekeeper shows that even laypeople had overly idealistic beliefs about the reading “good books.”
In "Libraries for “the People” Pawley bring up the issue of whether collections should be built based on patron demand or a librarian’s discretion. This issue is seen in a new light when one considers the tax supported library versus the philanthropic gift library. With the tax supported library it is easy to argue that the tax payers should have a say in what they have access to because they own part of the collection. As far as the gift library is concerned the philanthropist who donates the money will have more control over what goes in to the library. If the philanthropist’s attitude is one of superiority it would be easy to see how that could translate into the mission and book collection of the library.
Fain: "Books for New Citizens" Article
When I started reading this article I was worried that it was going to rehash the debate over whether the early public library was a tool for social control or more a progressive institution. This article does deal with this debate but to Fain’s credit not by making generalizations about huge social, political and economic factors but by narrowing in on the immigrant experience with public libraries in the late 1800s.
Fain argues that the librarians saw it as their job to Americanize immigrants. Given that the goal was assimilation it’s not that surprising that bringing foreign language books into the library would be a contentious issue. But it also sounds a lot like “the fiction problem” where light reading was offered to entice people inside. I had to look up the word “polyglot” and was surprised at its neutral definition considering the negative connotations the editor of the Library Journal weighted it with. It reminded me that we can debate the motives and integrity of Americanization efforts where there was subtle subconscious ethnic and racial prejudices that might have underlay some librarians’ good intentions but there was also glaring discrimination that was just as socially acceptable. It reminded me of the discussion we had in class about how historians with an understanding of sexism see feminization with contemporary understanding.
I liked the accounts of individual Americanizers in the library because it really illustrates that not only were there different routes that people took to foster assimilation but there were various standards of the appropriate level of American-ness that an immigrant should have. For example, Carr didn’t encourage people to stop being Italian but (as bad as it sounds) to be less Italian and more American.
Fain argues that the librarians saw it as their job to Americanize immigrants. Given that the goal was assimilation it’s not that surprising that bringing foreign language books into the library would be a contentious issue. But it also sounds a lot like “the fiction problem” where light reading was offered to entice people inside. I had to look up the word “polyglot” and was surprised at its neutral definition considering the negative connotations the editor of the Library Journal weighted it with. It reminded me that we can debate the motives and integrity of Americanization efforts where there was subtle subconscious ethnic and racial prejudices that might have underlay some librarians’ good intentions but there was also glaring discrimination that was just as socially acceptable. It reminded me of the discussion we had in class about how historians with an understanding of sexism see feminization with contemporary understanding.
I liked the accounts of individual Americanizers in the library because it really illustrates that not only were there different routes that people took to foster assimilation but there were various standards of the appropriate level of American-ness that an immigrant should have. For example, Carr didn’t encourage people to stop being Italian but (as bad as it sounds) to be less Italian and more American.
First Fain Article
Fain gives a summary of Harris’ view of elitism and social control in the library and she doesn’t seem to deny it. Fain was skeptical if Harris’ revisionist theory was really revisionist because she notes that he borrowed theories from public school development and applied them to the public library because of the parallels in the development of both institutions. Fain says that unlike the public school the library had to attract readers which would be especially difficult to do if you followed Harris’ belief that librarians didn’t care about the number of library users.
Reading what Garrison had to say about feminization in the public library got me excited to read Apostles of Culture. It is interesting that Fain sees Garrison and Harris could hold such different opinions on the attitude of librarians because while I did gather that Harris thought that early librarians took an authoritative stance those in the twentieth century were more neutral and service oriented like how Garrison described.I don’t know Garrison if saw female librarians as being non-assertive throughout the history of library development or if Fain would consider that as something she conveniently left out of her “single minded pursuit of a thesis.”
Reading what Garrison had to say about feminization in the public library got me excited to read Apostles of Culture. It is interesting that Fain sees Garrison and Harris could hold such different opinions on the attitude of librarians because while I did gather that Harris thought that early librarians took an authoritative stance those in the twentieth century were more neutral and service oriented like how Garrison described.I don’t know Garrison if saw female librarians as being non-assertive throughout the history of library development or if Fain would consider that as something she conveniently left out of her “single minded pursuit of a thesis.”
Dain Article
I don’t really doubt that Harris lacks evidence for the claims that he makes but he definitely didn’t provide many raw fact in his article which is probably why I got the feeling that it was full of sweeping generalizations. In her sections on nonpublic libraries and the librarian Dain gives us data that reveals that by comparison to independent and social libraries public libraries had more books, money, higher circulation were open free of charge to more people making them more successful and by comparison more democratic. This information clashes with Harris’ opinion that the public library was a largely elitist institution.
Dain’s description of the Ticknor is more forgiving and thus more realistic than Harris’ one sided argument. So while Dain doesn’t dispute that Ticknor wasn’t liberal progressive that some historians may make him out to be she balances out Harris’ view so that Ticknor appears to be some one in between the two extremes.
Dain brings up a good point when she suggests that strictness in regards to the use of library materials was due to cultural lag because books only recently became cheap. Maybe that same sort of cultural lag is what was responsible for some people’s distrust of light fiction. She also encourages reader to look at individual libraries to evaluate and compare the relative strictness of each.
Dain like Fain end her article with a lot of questions especially about the work of librarians and how the library compares to other institutions of the time. Honestly, I think that the questions were an exciting part of the article if only because that is where one could start further research from and that they try to point that potential future research in a direction that expands the field instead of going over the same issues.
Dain’s description of the Ticknor is more forgiving and thus more realistic than Harris’ one sided argument. So while Dain doesn’t dispute that Ticknor wasn’t liberal progressive that some historians may make him out to be she balances out Harris’ view so that Ticknor appears to be some one in between the two extremes.
Dain brings up a good point when she suggests that strictness in regards to the use of library materials was due to cultural lag because books only recently became cheap. Maybe that same sort of cultural lag is what was responsible for some people’s distrust of light fiction. She also encourages reader to look at individual libraries to evaluate and compare the relative strictness of each.
Dain like Fain end her article with a lot of questions especially about the work of librarians and how the library compares to other institutions of the time. Honestly, I think that the questions were an exciting part of the article if only because that is where one could start further research from and that they try to point that potential future research in a direction that expands the field instead of going over the same issues.
Harris Article
Harris’ claim that social control and power was the purpose of early libraries seems similar to some of the points that Ditzion brought up throughout his article and especially in his conclusion so maybe it’s not that revisionist.
The two main purposes of the conservative library founders, to educates the masses and provide scholarly resources for the upper classes, seem dead on but the former is definitely more prevalent in this article and the other documents that we’ve been studying. Harris’ insistence that authoritarianism and then bureaucracy made libraries distant from the goals of the founders sounds like a cynical generalization but his really is a revisionist interpretation then maybe that is just what other library historians needed to hear in order to seriously consider Harris’ point of view. Overall, I think that Harris’ argument is that the public libraries purpose of educating the common man isn’t bad per se, for example, when immigrants choose to use the libraries they did so with success. The root of Harris’ criticism is that argument for self-education often came from men with paternalistic tendencies and real belief in their cultural and intellectual superiority, such as is the case with Ticknor, Everett and Cargenie.
Harris also says that as the modern library became increasing distant from its original purpose that librarians have become more and more apathetic. The librarians are portrayed as moving along a spectrum where on one side, in the mid to late nineteenth century they were expected to mold a reader’s taste for literature and learning and then in the early and mid twentieth century they were to be total neutral disseminators of information.
The two main purposes of the conservative library founders, to educates the masses and provide scholarly resources for the upper classes, seem dead on but the former is definitely more prevalent in this article and the other documents that we’ve been studying. Harris’ insistence that authoritarianism and then bureaucracy made libraries distant from the goals of the founders sounds like a cynical generalization but his really is a revisionist interpretation then maybe that is just what other library historians needed to hear in order to seriously consider Harris’ point of view. Overall, I think that Harris’ argument is that the public libraries purpose of educating the common man isn’t bad per se, for example, when immigrants choose to use the libraries they did so with success. The root of Harris’ criticism is that argument for self-education often came from men with paternalistic tendencies and real belief in their cultural and intellectual superiority, such as is the case with Ticknor, Everett and Cargenie.
Harris also says that as the modern library became increasing distant from its original purpose that librarians have become more and more apathetic. The librarians are portrayed as moving along a spectrum where on one side, in the mid to late nineteenth century they were expected to mold a reader’s taste for literature and learning and then in the early and mid twentieth century they were to be total neutral disseminators of information.
Ditzion Article
It is easy for me to be critical looking back on the super idealistic and sometimes seemly elitist motives of reformers but the third paragraph of the Ditzion article brings up the point that nineteenth century humanitarianism was feed by the developing field of social science. Librarians sought to help people help themselves because picking ones self up by their bootstraps was how you escaped poverty and crime. Even the quote from the American Social Science Association mentions the “causes of Human Failure,” which sounds suspiciously similar to "individual failure." That was just how social problems were popularly viewed at the time and as Ditzion makes clear Libraries weren’t the only institutions that followed this line of reasoning.
I think that Ditzion was the first in the articles that we’ve read to bring up the Temperance movement in relationship to the humanitarianism of libraries but there doesn’t seem to be much of a relationship between the two besides that the both touted the economic advantages of temperance. Ditzion says that he couldn’t even find information about significant Temperance work done specifically in or through libraries but suggest at the end of the section “Drink” that Temperance workers were asking too much of public libraries by asking them to remove literature that was inappropriate by their standards. He says that Temperance literature in libraries was more popular than Temperance reading rooms but doesn’t give a reason why. In his last sentence of the section he undermines Temperance workers efforts in general as if he forgot that they eventually succeed with prohibition (and later these same women who “may well have been afraid of a democratic, intelligent, free public library” also got the right to vote).
I think that Ditzion was the first in the articles that we’ve read to bring up the Temperance movement in relationship to the humanitarianism of libraries but there doesn’t seem to be much of a relationship between the two besides that the both touted the economic advantages of temperance. Ditzion says that he couldn’t even find information about significant Temperance work done specifically in or through libraries but suggest at the end of the section “Drink” that Temperance workers were asking too much of public libraries by asking them to remove literature that was inappropriate by their standards. He says that Temperance literature in libraries was more popular than Temperance reading rooms but doesn’t give a reason why. In his last sentence of the section he undermines Temperance workers efforts in general as if he forgot that they eventually succeed with prohibition (and later these same women who “may well have been afraid of a democratic, intelligent, free public library” also got the right to vote).
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