Library Daylight: Traces of Modern Librarianship, 1874-1922

by Rory Litwin (editor)

Library Daylight is an eclectic collection of 36 articles about libraries and librarianship published between 1874 and 1922. These items, most of which will be new even to those most well-versed in American library history, cover topics that are hotly discussed today: library education, women's issues, library technology, the image of librarians, copyright, the tension between libraries as educational institutions and libraries as popular centers, the nature of library service, the public sphere, library PR, librarians and political activism, and visions of the future. The sources of these articles include early ALA conference proceedings, early issues of Library Journal and other library periodicals, daily newspapers, and popular magazines. Authors range from still-well-known leaders in the field to anonymous journalists. This will be rewarding reading for anyone interested in how our present-day issues are connected to the library past.

264 pages, Paperback

First published December 13, 2006

Reviews

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Particularly the first half of the fifty years covered in this collection was a time of radical change for libraries in the English speaking world. Reviewing the arguments made and the early steps of the American Library Association and the rest of the library community towards professionalization makes it clear that things could have gone very differently. That the British Museum (as it was called back then) had a long struggle to adopt electric lights, or the debates about women's roles as library workers, speak volumes. Knowing that libraries in other parts of the world in the same period did not become especially "public" or patron-oriented and more or less remained stodgy temples to various canons puts the heroic efforts of librarians at that time in context as they made libraries into important centers for the community -- not only educational institutions but also places for the less privileged to have access to more popular culture. There are some echoes into the present, as we amazingly still have gender issues with staffing, for example, or how the articles discussing how the telephone will impact library work seem to rhyme with discussions about the Internet from two decades ago. I seem to remember being in an online group called "Library 2.0" back then... anyway... If libraries are still places that try to change with the times and find new ways to meet communities' information needs, it's because of the work people did 100 to 150 years ago and it all could have gone a different route, leaving us in library darkness instead of daylight.