If a Library Is Bookless, What's In It?

  • Tom Frey, executive director, The DaVinci Institute
  • Jo Haight-Sarling, director, access and technology services at the Denver Public Library System
  • Charles Brown, director, Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, N.C.
  • Talk of the Nation, 27 February 2006

"What helps make the evolution of libraries so complicated are two related questions: What is the library's role -- and who should pay for it? The squeeze on county and municipal budgets prompts many to wonder if they will continue to pay for these institutions. Others insist that the public library plays a vital role as a community center and as an intellectual oasis, a place to reflect as well as a place to learn. But if it's to survive, it has to adapt."

Public Libraries pack a powerful $$ punch

  • Tom Storey
  • OCLC Newsletter, 31 March 2005

"Today's public libraries are more than technology centers, book repositories, quiet reading spaces, coffee shops or busy community centers. They are engines that pump millions of dollars into local and state economies."

Literature review

This review is very focused on the situation in North Carolina

  • Does it make you wonder about the place of public libraries in the political context of other states?
  • Or in other countries?
  • What other levels of politics are in effect in public library settings?
  • Consider local government, local opinion makers, local newspapers, local organizations, local library boards
  • How does one interact with them all?

The Public Library in the Political Process

  • Do Garceau's observations have validity today, over a half century after he wrote them?
  • Why were the results of the Public Library Inquiry relegated to the history shelves?
  • Were they invalid?
  • Or did they reveal things about the situation that people just didn't want to have to confront?

Other possible readings

Reform and reaction: the big city public library in American life

Rosemary Ruhig Du Mont, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1977, 153p. tables. refs. Bibliog.

  • Examines the forces in America at the turn of the century which contributed to the public library's concern with social control in the name of community reform. Central issues are the changes which occurred in public library services, such as the growth of adult services, the expansion of use through branch libraries, library work with children and with immigrants, the growth of open shelf collections, and the library's role as a social centre. Appraises the role of philanthropy in the development of new library services and examines the impact of social change on library book selection policies. The period studied is 1890-1915. Chapters cover:
    1. Library historians and their history;
    2. The American public library: origins and background;
    3. The library and social reform;
    4. Library philanthropy;
    5. Expansion of library service: change of operational policies;
    6. Change of service policies;
    7. Book selection in the public library, 1890-1915; and
    8. The current public library.1977

Clienteles: service to the urban rank and file

Hardy R. Franklin, A century of service: librarianship in the United States and Canada, edited by S.L. Jackson, E.B. Herling, E.J. Josey. Chicago, American Library Association, 1976, 1-19. refs

  • Covers library service to the working class of the United States, particularly in the early years of the public library's existence, their attitudes to libraries and the role of the librarian. However, even as late as 1939, male industrial workers, skilled and unskilled, made up only 5% of the library's cardholders in an ordinary sized town. Libraries were still not conveniently situated and were uncomfortable for the ordinary working man in his working clothes. Discusses the efforts of libraries to establish bonds with organized labor and the new challenges of immigrants and the indigenous poor. It is disconcerting that libraries are even today little used by, and of little use to blue-collar workers-a situation predicted to get worse. There have been some notable, if sporadic, forays to remedy this, but the battle has hardly been joined.

Reaching the rural reader: traveling libraries in America, 1892-1920

Joanne E. Passet ,Libraries and Culture 26 (1) Winter 91, 100-118. illus. 88 refs

  • Paper presented at Library History Seminar VIII, 'Reading and Libraries', held at the Indiana Memorial Union, Indiana University, Bloomington, 9-11 May 90, under the auspices of the American Library Association's Library History Round Table. Melvil Dewey initiated the American traveling library movement in New York State in 1892 and the idea spread during an era in which reformers regarded the book as a curative for societal ills. After 1920 traveling libraries gradually gave way to systems of country libraries, branch libraries and book wagons.

The history and development of rural public libraries

Lisa deGruyter, Library Trends 28 (4) Spring 80, 513-523. 37 refs

  • Contribution to an issue devoted to current trends in rural public library service. History of the rural public library service in the USA, suggesting that this development may be seen in terms of 5 periods:
    1. the library extension movement beginning in the 1890s;
    2. the move towards county libraries in the World War 1 years and the 1920s;
    3. the movement in the late 1930s and 1940s toward regional and cooperative services;
    4. the period from 1956 which marked the passing of the Library Services Act; and
    5. the period from 1964 when the LSA was expanded into the Library Services and Construction Act, with much more emphasis on aid to large and urban libraries and on regional and statewide interlibrary cooperation.