Books, Maps, and Politics: A Cultural History of the Library of Congress, 1783-1861

Notes

221 NOTES introduction 1. Robert Darnton, “What Is the History of Books?” in Books and Society in History, ed. Kenneth E. Carpenter (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1983), 3. 2. John P. Feather, “The Book in History and the History of the Book,” in Libraries, Books, and Culture: Proceedings of Library History Seminar VII, ed. Donald G. Davis (Austin: Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Texas at Austin, 1986), 24. 3. Wayne Wiegand, “The Literature of American Library History, 1985–1986,” Libraries and Culture 23, 3 (1988): 332. 4. Wayne Wiegand, Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey (Chicago : American Library Association, 1996); Alistair Black, A New History of the English Public Library: Social and Intellectual Contexts, 1850–1914 (London: Leicester University Press, 1996); Jane Aikin Rosenberg, The Nation’s Great Library: Herbert Putnam and the Library of Congress, 1899–1939 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Charles Goodrum and Helen Dalrymple, The Library of Congress (Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1982). Numerous works by John Y. Cole are relevant and are cited in the following chapters, but representative of his exemplary contributions to Library of Congress history is For Congress and the Nation: A Chronological History of the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1979). chapter one 1. Alan Bisbort and Linda Barrett Osborne, The Nation’s Library: The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2000), 19. 222 notes to pages 7–11 2. That is, as long as the Library lives up to its mission. Nicholson Baker’s controversial book, which takes the Library to task for failing to preserve printed items in favor of microformats, makes for an instructive contrast with the Library’s own promotional publications, such as the Bisbort and Osborne title cited above. See Baker, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (New York: Random House, 2001). 3. Both William Dawson Johnston (History of the Library of Congress, Volume 1, 1800–1864 [Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1904]) and David Mearns (The Story up to Now: The Library of Congress, 1800–1946 [Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1947]) begin their narratives of the history of the Library of Congress with Elbridge Gerry’s proposal for a library in 1789. In 1948, however, Fulmer Mood corrected the historical record by pointing out that Theodorick Bland made the first motion for a congressional library during the Second Continental Congress in November 1782; Madison chaired the committee that took Bland’s motion under advisement and recommended in favor of a library (“The Continental Congress and the Plan for a Library of Congress in 1782–1783,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 72, [1948]: 3–24). Adrienne Koch opines that Madison “was without doubt and without significant aid from others the first sponsor of the idea of a library for Congress” (“James Madison and the Library of Congress,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 37, 2 [1980]: 159). In “The Library List of 1783” (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1969), Loren E. Smith discusses Madison’s predominant role in authorship of the 1783 list ofbooksrecommendedfortheuseofCongress. 4. Mood, “Continental Congress,” 11–12. 5. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, ed. Worthington C. Ford et al. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1904–37), 25: 858–59. 6. Smith, “Library List,” 31. 7. H. Trevor Colbourn,TheLamp ofExperience:WhigHistoryandtheIntellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North CarolinaPress, 1965), 4. 8. Journals of the Continental Congress 24 (1783): 83–92. 9. Mark Olsen and Louis-Georges Harvey, “Reading in Revolutionary Times: Book Borrowing from the Harvard College Library, 1773–1782,” Harvard Library Bulletin, n.s., 4, 3 (1993–94): 60. 10. Larry E. Sullivan, “The Reading Habits of the Nineteenth-Century Baltimore Bourgeoisie: A Cross-Cultural Analysis,” Journal of Library History16,2(1981): 230. 11. Tom Glynn and Craig C. Hagensick, “Books for the Use of the UnitedStates in Congress Assembled, 1783and1800,”LibrariesandCulture37,2(2002):111.Thanks to Tom Glynn for allowing me to read a draft of his essay before it appeared in print. 12. In the notes that follow (through n. 22), I have listed the editions of theworks that were consulted in preparing this overview of the contents of works onMadison’s list. The editions available often were not the first editions, which accounts for the discrepancy in publication datesbetween thetext,whichlistsdateoffirstpublication, and the notes. Also included in the notes are secondary works that were consultedin [18.218.38.125] Project...