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

Chapter 9: Epilogue

259 9 Epilogue E The Wisconsin-Wide Library Idea . . . recognizes the State’s responsibility for initiating and subsidizing public libraries, a responsibility directly related to a basic constitutional principle of the United States—equal educational opportunity for all. “State Plan for Further Extension of Public Library Services to Rural Areas,” 1957 With the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as president in 1952, many conservatives hoped to see Roosevelt’s New Deal rolled back. In fact, Eisenhower largely maintained the status quo with respect to government programs, neither retreating, nor pressing for new initiatives. In the case of libraries, though, he presided over an expansion of government when, in 1956, with passage of the Library Services Act (LSA), federal assistance to libraries at last became a reality. The LSA was designed to improve library access specifically in rural areas. In 1956 the U.S. Office of Education had conducted a study that showed that twenty-six million rural residents lacked any kind of public library service , and that an additional fifty million had only inadequate service.1 The bill provided for an annual appropriation of $7.5 million, to be allotted to states according to the size of their rural population, and to be matched by the states on the basis of their per capita income. Funds could be used for salaries, books and other materials, library equipment , and operating expenses, but not for buildings or land. Over the next five years, state library extension agencies added over five million 1 James W. Fry, “LSA and LCSA, 1956–1973: A Legislative History,” Library Trends 24, no. 1 (1975): 9. 260฀ Epilogue books and other materials, and over two hundred bookmobiles, to the nation’s stock of library resources. Still, some resisted federal help. Arguments for and against federal involvement in library funding ranged on either side of a long-standing divide. Some legislators like Laurence Curtis (Republican, Massachusetts) envisaged the federal government’s role as stepping forward only when states were unable to fill citizens’ needs. Other opponents were particularly anxious to reverse what they saw as New Deal weakening of individual incentive and selfreliance . Yet others opposed the raising of taxes. Many combined these strands into defense of a conservative view of democracy that accorded only a minor role to federal government.2 In the end, however, Indiana was the only state to refuse LSA funds. Indiana’s Republican governor, Harold Handley, was reported as fearing that Hoosiers would be “brainwashed with books handpicked by Washington bureaucrats,” and turned down $700,000 of funding in the first four years after the act passed.3 In Wisconsin, by contrast, the WFLC eagerly prepared a “State Plan” to support its claim to a share of federal bounty. This document reiterated many of the principles and practical suggestions first articulated in The Wisconsin-Wide Library Idea, declaring that its “guiding principles” were “as valid and applicable in 1956 as they were in 1948.”4 In particular, it urged local libraries to put forward plans for cooperative county or multicounty systems. Another impetus toward regional collaboration and away from local independence came in the same year from the American Library Association, when it issued a new set of standards for public libraries. Calling for “librarians, library boards, government officials and interested citizens” to assess “the adequacy of their present library services” and formulate “plans for improvement,” the standards urged them to adopt a “cooperative approach,” arguing that this was “the most important single recommendation” of the document .5 Despite these official promptings, Wisconsin counties were slow 2 Douglas Raber, “Ideological Opposition to Federal Library Legislation: The Case of the Library Services Act of 1956,” Public Libraries 34, no. 3 (1995): 162–69. 3 Fry, “LSA and LCSA,” 11, 12. 4 “State Plan for Further Extension of Public Library Services to Rural Areas,” Wisconsin Library Bulletin 53, no. 1 (1957): 296–97. 5 Public Library Service: A Guide to Evaluation with Minimum Standards (Chicago: American Library Association, 1956), 7. Epilogue฀ 261 to respond. By 1959, WFLC secretary Janice S. Kee reported that eleven counties were working on setting up county or multicounty libraries, but so far all were still at the planning stage.6 Greater impetus occurred only after another decade of work by the library commission and the Wisconsin Library Association that resulted in passage of legislation authorizing cooperation among all types of libraries, especially school and public libraries, and providing for...