Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America

Contents

Preface vii Introduction 3 Christine Pawley Part 1: Methods and Evidence Community Places and Reading Spaces: Main Street Public Library in the Rural Heartland, 1876–1956 23 Wayne A. Wiegand Reading Library Records: Constructing and Using the What Middletown Read Database 40 Frank Felsenstein, John Straw, Katharine Leigh, and James J. Connolly “Story Develops Badly, Could Not Finish”: Member Book Reviews at the Boston Athenæum in the 1920s 64 Ross Harvey “A Search for Better Ways into the Future”: The Library of Congress and Its Users in the Interwar Period 78 Jane Aikin Part 2: Public Libraries, Readers, and Localities Going to “America”: Italian Neighborhoods and the Newark Free Public Library, 1900–1920 97 Ellen M. Pozzi Contents “A Liberal and Dignified Approach”: The John Toman Branch of the Chicago Public Library and the Making of Americans, 1927–1940 111 Joyce M. Latham Counter Culture: The World as Viewed from Inside the Indianapolis Public Library, 1944–1956 129 Jean Preer Part 3: Intellectual Freedom Censorship in the Heartland: Eastern Iowa Libraries during World War I 151 Julia Skinner Locating the Library in the Nonlibrary Censorship of the 1950s: Ideological Negotiations in the Professional Record 168 Joan Bessman Taylor “Is Your Public Library Family Friendly?” Libraries as a Site of Conservative Activism, 1992–2002 185 Loretta M. Gaffney The Challengers of West Bend: The Library as a Community Institution 200 Emily Knox Part 4: Librarians and the Alternative Press Meta-Radicalism: The Alternative Press by and for Activist Librarians 217 Alycia Sellie From the Underground to the Stacks and Beyond: Girl Zines, Zine Librarians, and the Importance of Itineraries through Print Culture 237 Janice A. Radway Contributors 261 Index 265 ...