The World of Tomorrow: Geographic Coverages of the Main Street Public Library, ALA Catalogs, and H. W. Wilson Company’s Standard Catalog for Public Libraries

This article details what one high school senior from each of the five Main Street public library communities (Sauk Centre, Minnesota; Osage, Iowa; Rhinelander, Wisconsin; Morris, Illinois; and Lexington, Michigan) would find in collections in 1945 related to particular geographies. The global milieu of the New York World’s Fair 1939–40 frames the historical events that stimulated each of the student’s topics. To determine what each public library’s collection held about the world, the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) section of geography and travel (classification number 910) was used. Cross-referencing each library’s accession records for books added prior to 1945 against books recommended for all public libraries in the geography and travel (910) sections of standard professional guides like the ALA catalogs , the H. W. Wilson Company’s Standard Catalog for Public Libraries, and other ALA publications like the Guide to Reference Books shows what students using these five libraries would have found. The recommended titles from the professional guides and those accessioned in the libraries indicate a distinct bias toward books concerning North America and Western Europe.