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xv Acknowledgments It’s been a great experience. While doing research for his book Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey (1996) at Columbia University in the early 1980s, Wayne Wiegand came across a cache of letters between Dewey (American Library Association president at the time) and Bertha Honoré Palmer,chair of the Board of Lady Managers of the World’s Columbian Exposition , who in 1892 and early 1893 was putting together a library of books written by women for the exposition’s Woman’s Building. Because she intended for it to cover all books issued since Christopher Columbus set foot in the New World in 1492,Palmer’s effort promised to create the most comprehensive collection of women’s writings ever assembled.The discovery was too tempting to pass up. In subsequent years (and between other research projects) Wayne slowly accumulated data on the origins of the collection, and when he found an abbreviated author/title catalog of the library’s contents in the papers of the Board of Lady Managers at the Chicago History Museum, he knew he needed an expert skilled in nineteenth-century American women’s literature to analyze the collection. Enter Sarah Wadsworth. Just completing a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota ,she agreed to join the project in 2000.Together we obtained a CarnegieWhitney grant from the American Library Association to create a relational database of the contents of the Woman’s Building Library that (unlike the abbreviated print version found at the Chicago History Museum) allows us to search by author, title, publisher, place and date of publication, state of origin , and broad Dewey Decimal number (which enables subject access). Then, in 2005, Melodie Fox came onboard and vastly improved the database while working on a graduate degree in Library and Information Studies through the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.Thanks to Melodie, and the team of LIS graduate assistants at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who preceded her, xvi Acknowledgments the database has allowed us to analyze the contents of the Woman’s Building Library with much greater precision and a wider scope. We have many people and institutions to thank for helping us complete this project.While teaching at the University of Kentucky (1976–1986), the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1987–2002), and Florida State University (2003 to 2010),Wayne benefited much from the services and materials in the collections amassed at each of these institutions over the generations. Most valuable were the collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society, which in the 1890s actively sought as much printed material from the 1893 World’s Fair as the society could obtain. Wayne also thanks University of Kentucky College of Library Science dean Timothy Sineath, University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Library and Information Studies director Louise S. Robbins, and Florida State University College of Information deans Jane B. Robbins and her successor, Larry Dennis, for their support. The library and archives professionals, staff, and collections at the Chicago History Museum, the University of Kentucky, the University of Wisconsin–Madison (especially Michelle Besant and her staff), the Wisconsin Historical Society (especially James P. Danky), the University of North Carolina (especially Robert Anthony and his staff), Florida State University (especially Pam Doffek and her staff), Library of Congress, Newberry Library in Chicago, University of Minnesota, Marquette University, and Northwestern University (especially Scott Krafft) were particularly helpful. At Marquette, Sarah benefited from two summers of support (a Summer Faculty Fellowship from the Graduate School and matching funds from the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences) that allowed her to crunch data using the new relational database and to draft chapters; a Junior Faculty Research Leave, spent reading and writing about fiction in the Woman’s Building Library, and a sabbatical, devoted in part to revising and polishing the completed manuscript. Sarah would like to acknowledge Kelsey Squire, for many valuable conversations on regionalism; and she especially thanks the Department of English and her graduate research assistants over the years: Jen Anderson, Kathleen Burt, Alisa Dargiewicz, Erin Kogler, Heather Pavletic, and Matthew Van Zee. Collectively, they prepared bibliographies (Alisa, Erin, Heather, and Kathleen), tracked down elusive sources and authors (Kathleen and Matthew), proofread drafts (Kathleen and Jen), helped prepare the tables in chapter 2 (Jen), and helped to verify quotations (Jen and Kathleen). Each was a pleasure to work with. At our request, several scholars read all or parts of the manuscript, and we owe them special thanks. Doris Weatherford read a complete late draft and...

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