Books, Bluster, and Bounty: Local Politics and Carnegie Library Building Grants in the Intermountain West, 1890-1920

Acknowledgments

viii Acknowledgments Gladys McQueen of the Carnegie Corporation Library in New York City and Brenda Hearing of Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library got this study off the ground by allowing me on-site and interlibrary loan access, respectively, to the microfilmed reels of original correspondence between Andrew Carnegie and applicant communities. Numerous staff members tirelessly fetched materials for me at research libraries and historical societies across the West, including the Oregon Historical Society Library in Portland, the Montana and Idaho State Historical Societies, the Utah State University Library, the University of Utah Library, the Utah State Historical Society, the Arizona State University Library, and the library of the University of Nevada, Reno. I received wonderful assistance in public libraries both large (Spokane, Reno, and Salt Lake City) and small (Steamboat Springs and Delta, Colorado; Pocatello, Idaho; Green River, Wyoming; and Prescott and Yuma, Arizona). Staff granted me access to rare book rooms and special collections archives in the Norlin Library at the University of Colorado, the University of Washington Library, the Provo, Utah, Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Durango, Colorado public libraries. This project has given me a permanent respect for the work that librarians do and for the riches that they superintend. I have also received financial support from various institutions. This project began with a sabbatical and Faculty Research Committee Grant from Idaho State University in 1989. Later phases of research were supported by travel-to-collections grants from ISU’s Department of English and Philosophy and its Office of Graduate Studies and Research, and by a Research Fellowship from the Idaho Humanities Council (IHC). This book has been vastly improved by the many people who have commented on my evolving conclusions. I’ve presented papers at the Rocky Mountain American Studies Association’s annual conference, at Idaho State University colloquia, and, most recently, at the New England American Studies Association’s annual meeting in October 2010. In a less formal Acknowledgments ix context, I’ve given numerous IHC Speakers Bureau talks on the subject of Carnegie library social history at public libraries across Idaho—now and then (always movingly) in the very structure whose genesis I was describing. Journal of the West published an article based on chapters 3 and 4 in 1991 and Nevada Magazine published an article based on chapter 7 in 2003. The two people who reviewed this manuscript for Utah State University Press (Daniel F. Ring and a woman whose name I do not know) gave useful critiques and suggestions. This project has also been influenced by the hundreds of Idaho librarians who have heard me give keynote addresses at Idaho Library Association state conferences, at regional meetings, and at summer institutes over the past twenty years. In answering their questions and articulating how my findings related to their work, I discovered this book’s thesis. My late husband, Ford Swetnam, contributed more to this project than I can begin to articulate in the space available here. Over the long tenure of this study, Ford came to know more than he ever wanted to know about Carnegie libraries. Deeply knowledgeable about regional culture and libraries himself, he listened, asked, suggested, and read endless drafts. He sympathized with my frustration when responsibilities as faculty senate chair and graduate director all but halted my work soon after it began, and celebrated when I had time to resume. He understood when I left for long research road trips, and he once took time from his own sabbatical to surprise me during a Valentine’s Day blizzard in Portland, where I was working in the Oregon Historical Society. When we traveled together, he cheerfully accepted detours so I could visit Carnegie library towns, and he found ways to occupy himself when I disappeared into tiny public libraries as soon as their doors opened in the morning, emerging only when those doors closed, babbling about some secret of local history, some wonderful gossip dead and buried for many decades. Living with another writer wasn’t easy, but he always managed with grace, good humor, and love. This book reflects his love—as well as mine— of the quirky, maddening, sublime Intermountain West. Cartography by: Adam Clegg Cartography by: Adam Clegg ...