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.”