Public libraries and information history

-
Public libraries are a cornerstone of my professional and academic passions.  The kinds of questions I've asked have always been:  how did this come to be?  Not in myself, but in the world... how did libraries, particularly public libraries, come to be the the places they are?

I answered some of these questions for myself in my dissertation and subsequent publications for Library Quarterly, Book History, Libraries and the Cultural Record (a journal that has changed names so many times it makes your head spin... it's now Information & Culture), and in a handful of book chapters.

But there's always more to learn, and I recently came across a great syllabus by my colleague Greg Downey at UW Madison who teaches in Journalism as well as LIS

http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/~gdowney/courses/lis569/index.php

Here's a sampling of the readings from the week on Public Library Purposes:

  • F. B. Perkins, “How to make town libraries successful,” in United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Public libraries in the United States of America: Their history, condition and management, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: US GPO, 1876), 419-430.
  • Sidney Ditzion, “The humanitarian idea” and “Conclusions” from Arsenals of a democratic culture: A social history of the American public library movement in New England and the Middle States from 1850-1900 (Chicago: ALA, 1947), 97-109, 190-193.
  • Michael H. Harris, “The purpose of the American library: A revisionist interpretation of history,” Library Journal (15 Sep 1973), 2509-2514.
  • Phyllis Dain, “Ambivalence and paradox: The social bonds of the public library,” Library Journal 100 (1975), 261-266.
  • Elaine Fain, “Manners and morals in the public library: A glance at some new history [with commentary by Michael Harris and Dee Garrison],” Journal of Library History 10:2 (1975), 99-116.


And another course from UNC's R. E. Berquist of readings on the public library:

http://www.ils.unc.edu/~bergr/LSIS5180/sessions/20080825-31/02b.beginnings.html

Popular posts from this blog

ALA and the Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians

-
Image
So ALA sent out their email to invite members to come to ALA Annual in Chicago this year, and they selected five sessions to highlight. Ours is one of them!   As the US struggles with an onslaught of book banning like we have not seen in my lifetime, our project, the Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians , aims to get ahead of what we expect to come next: local battles over the existence of public and community college libraries. In fact, this battle has already begun, with some community college libraries in my state losing up to 2/3rds of their former staffing levels since the Covid-19 pandemic. We are right on time. This concern about defending libraries launched my research on understanding data storytelling in librarianship, with a pilot project in 2019 funded by the Center for Social & Behavioral Science at the University of Illinois--an article on obstacles to library data storytelling is in press with Public Library Quarterly, likely to be published in summer 2023. ...
Read more

Bad Information: What's wrong with the story?

-
New article in Information Matters is out! Here's a brief excerpt: "We all love a good story, and storytelling is a central way that human share experiences, from what happened at work or school today to the most meaningful moments of our lives. We tell stories about everything, from what we know to be true to what we fear might happen someday, and stories always involve emotional engagement. How do we know if a story is accurate or inaccurate, rational or exaggerated, correct or misleading, especially when an untrue story may be more gripping than the truth? When misinformation is spreading as people retell fake stories, stopping it requires a better understanding of how stories work and what specific information errors lead to the crafting—deliberate or accidental—of compelling misinformation stories."  https://informationmatters.org/2023/04/storytelling-dynamics-and-misinformation-the-bad-s-dikw-framework/
Read more

What Storytelling Is (Not)

-
Image
Everybody is talking about "storytelling" lately... When you hear the word "storytelling" so much, it seems like anything and everything can be storytelling. But it's important to define it so you know what I'm talking about. As written previously, I define storytelling as a dynamic exchange between the tale, the teller, and the audience. Understanding what is not storytelling--according to the definition I am developing based on the tradition of storytelling in librarianship--may help to further illuminate what storytelling is. But perhaps I should start with a quick definition of what storytelling is. Stories are fascinating; lots of  people are deeply interested in story structure, but I focus most on storytelling. To understand the "telling" part, I see benefits to focusing on the dynamic of storytelling as a three-part interchange. We learn about listening from this model in ways that other models miss by focusing solely on the story....
Read more