READINGS FOR WEEK 2

Free libraries as referenced by J.P. Quincy, Jesse Shera, and Robert V. Williams have a long and storied history in America. All three articles discuss the various motives for the establishment of libraries and the successes and failures of various efforts over time.

Quincy suggests that moral regulation provided reasoning for the opening of many libraries. Libraries it was thought were an improvement on the pubs and taverns of the day. Given this regulatory role, Quincy thought that libraries needed to be selective about the materials they collected such that “sensational fiction” not find its way into the impressionable mind of workers, or children (Quincy p.393).

Furthermore, he acknowledges the fact of the time that most libraries were established by wealthy benefactors, and it was therefore their responsibility as members of the upper-class to guard the morality of the lower-classes. He observed that it was often the case that the lower-classes were fed dime novels rather than works of history or industry.

He suggested that such works could lead to violence, as was the case with one particular youth, known as Pomeroy (p.396). Thusly he thought it best that libraries avoid being purveyors of popularity and instead become institutions of inquiry. Knowledge and recreational reading are not assumed to be analogous in an era when the public library was the public university for the common man.

Yet even as a library should avoid collecting works of low-brow fiction, it was thought that libraries had a role as a cradle of democracy. Therefore, it was suggested that each library make an effort to cultivate works on every side of the serious questions of the day, in an effort that a young democracy not become an “oratory of aristocracy “ in the words of Hobbs (p. 402)

Shera’s work from 1949 suggests many factors for the founding of the early American libraries in New England. Among the reasons suggested are 1) the rise of public education 2) the rise of worker’s education 3) the rise of a sense of morality and philanthropy (the idea of “the native son”) (p.202)

As industrialization swept New England, increasing the concentration of wealth, the wealthy began to sow back into their communities. This in part led to the establishment of libraries. In a time of increase intellectual work, the library seemed a logical way of giving back but also establishing one’s name. At times libraries were established even though the public did not demand them.

Yet, as society developed from more religiously motivated inquiry to a science based frame of mind, the library became a tool of inquiry for the new questions being asked. The 1800’s saw a growing awareness of national history, as the new nation thought about preservation of historical artifacts. This lead to the formation of historical societies and the Library of Congress.

The collection of rare documents gave rise to the notion of a non-circulating collection within some libraries as in the 1840’s many libraries were thinking about ways to preserve documents in their care.

In terms of mission, the library at this time began to realize its role in the education of the masses. The schools of the time were sorely lacking, even as compulsory education became the law of the land. The library then it was thought could be a supplement for the education of the young and a common university for the perfecting of man.

The work of Robert V. Williams further expands upon the reasoning for the establishment of libraries. Williams dismisses the idea that one single theory can explain the rise of libraries in the 1800’s. Neither the rise of democratic participation nor the “social conditions” of religion, vocational aspirations and economic factors can fully explain the rise of the library according to Williams. Many other variables present at the time are left unconsidered by these theories. Often times, the writers fall back on tropes of history – religious Puritanism, education of the poor, and other suspected causes, without, according to Williams, giving hard facts to back up these theories of causation.

Williams notes that question of the library itself being an independent variable in the rise of the library is often left unanswered. Certainly one could make the argument that not only do librarians have an impact on the rise of libraries, but also the influence European libraries gave rise to the desire for great American libraries.

Williams does not question that there are theoretical answers to the rise of libraries; he merely asks that the variables within the theories be fully tested before we make conclusions about our past that exclude key elements, rendering the theories incomplete.