Reading Places: Literacy, Democracy, and the Public Library in Cold War America

Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book

by Christine Pawley

This book recounts the history of an experimental regional library service in the early 1950s, a story that has implications far beyond the two Wisconsin counties where it took place. Using interviews and library records, Christine Pawley reveals the choices of ordinary individual readers, showing how local cultures of reading interacted with formal institutions to implement an official literacy policy.

Central to the experiment were well-stocked bookmobiles that brought books to rural districts and the one-room schools that dotted the region. Three years after the project began, state officials and local librarians judged it an overwhelming success. Library circulation figures soared to two-and-a-half times their previous level. Over 90 percent of grade-school children in the rural schools used the bookmobile service, and their reading scores improved beyond expectation.

Despite these successes, however, local communities displayed deeply divided reactions. Some welcomed the book-mobiles and new library services wholeheartedly, valuing print and reading as essential to the exercise of democracy, and keen to widen educational opportunities for children growing up on hardscrabble farms where books and magazines were rare. Others feared the intrusion of govern- ment into their homes and communities, resented the tax increases that library services entailed, and complained about the subversive or immoral nature of some books.

Analyzing the history of tensions between various community groups, Pawley delineates the long-standing antagonisms arising from class, gender, and ethnic differences which contributed to a suspicion of official projects to expand education. Relating a seemingly small story of library policy, she teases out the complex interaction of reading, locality, and cultural difference. In so doing, she illuminates broader questions regarding libraries, literacy, and citizenship, reaching back to the nineteenth century and forward to the present day.

Genres: History, Books About Books, Nonfiction, Politics

272 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2010

Reviews

[Carly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this for school. It was fine lol

[Marvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This historical monograph, ostensibly a case study of a regional library program, including a bookmobile, in Wisconsin's Door Peninsula in the early 1950s (before the area became widely known as a resort area) is, in some ways a peculiar book. The case study itself takes up relatively little space in the book; instead, every aspect of the case prompts a contextual exposition: analysis of the ethnic makeup of the peninsula's residents yields a history of immigration; there's a history of immigration going back to early America; we learn about Wisconsin Progressivism & the history of Wisconsin's Legislative Reference Library, about women's clubs, the professionalization (& feminization) of libraries, & lots & lots about the history of reading & print culture. That would not seem to be a formula for success, but the author has mastered an impressive range of secondary literature & summarized it in a way that worked well for me. At the heart of the book are questions that were apparently at the heart of the library profession at the time: Who are libraries for (children or adults, women or men) & where should they focus their efforts (collections & programs)? Should collections be built to serve the interests of users or should they reflect elite professionals' notions of what patrons need to become better citizens? Should readers' weakness for fiction be discourage or encouraged as a way to induce them to read "better" material? The Cold War aspect alluded to in the title really gets very little attention. But to the extent that it does, the questions it raises about reading and libraries, like the other questions this book raises, interested me. But then, since, as the author points out, we enjoy reading about ourselves, my interest was no doubt magnified by my fond, vivid memories of bookmobile visits in the late 1950s or early 1960s to my small (pop. 350), rural village in northwestern Ohio. (My mother tells me that she thinks it only came for one summer, though my probably skewed childhood memories make it seem more long-lasting than that.) I often credit the series of Landmark biographies that I checked out from the bookmobile as stimulating my interest in history. And they, no doubt, would have met with the approval of elite professional librarians of the day, though that series is not mentioned in this book (perhaps, since the series seems to have originated in 1950, they were a little too late to be a part of the Door program). Quite apart from my personal interest and the particular Door Peninsula story, I learned a lot about the general history of reading, literacy, and libraries.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid discussion of reading during the Cold War that locates larger questions within the case study of a Northern WI bookmobile program.