Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States (Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.89 (733 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1558495916 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 392 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-04-27 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
In addition to the editors, contributors include Elizabeth Amann, Michael Baenen, James Green, Elizabeth McHenry, Barbara Mitchell, Christine Pawley, Janice Radway, James Raven, Karin Roffman, and Roy Rosenzweig.. Writing from a rich variety of perspectives, the contributors raise important questions about the material forms and social shapes of American culture. What is a library? How have libraries fostered communities of readers and influenced the practice of reading in particular communities? How did the development of modern libraries alter the boundaries of individual and social experience, and define new kinds of public culture? To what extent have libraries served as commercial enterprises, as centers of power, and as places of empowerment for African Americans, women, and immigrants? Institutions of Reading offers at once a social history of literacy and leisure, an intellectual history of institutional and tec
Knoles, American Antiquarian Society"These remarkable essays excel at situating library history in broader contextsAmerican intellectual and cultural history, the politics and economics of gender, the changing technologies for reproducing print. "This is a first-rate publication. It will be useful also to cultural historians and scholars interested in the history of the book. The book will appeal to historians of reading and libraries and to librarians interested in the origins of their institutions."Richard J. It adds to the scholarly literature on the history of libraries and reading, and provides us with a dozen interesting and well-done case studies cutting acr
A welcome addition to library history and library science shelves. Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States is an anthology of essays by learned authors concerning the evolution of the modern institution of the library, from the late eighteenth century to the modern digital era. Individual essays include "Subscription Libraries and Commercial Circulating Libraries in Colonial Philadelphia and New York", "Faith in Reading: Public Libraries, Liberalism, and the Civil Religion", "Women Writers and Their Libraries in the 1920s", "Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era", and many more. An astute and scholarly exploration of what compos
Kenneth Carpenter is emeritus editor of the Harvard Library Bulletin, Houghton Library. Thomas Augst is associate professor of English, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.