Before the Public Library
Author | : Mark Towsey |
Publisher | : BRILL |
Total Pages | : 433 |
Release | : 2017-10-23 |
ISBN-10 | : 9789004348677 |
ISBN-13 | : 9004348670 |
Rating | : 4/5 (670 Downloads) |
Download or read book Before the Public Library written by Mark Towsey and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-10-23 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the Public Library explores the emergence of community-based lending libraries in the Atlantic World before the advent of the Public Library movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Essays by eighteen scholars from a range of disciplines seek to place, for the first time, community libraries within an Atlantic context over a two-century period. Taking a comparative approach, this volume shows that community libraries played an important – and largely unrecognized – role in shaping Atlantic social networks, political and religious movements, scientific and geographic knowledge, and economic enterprise. Libraries had a distinct role to play in shaping modern identities through the acquisition and circulation of specific kinds of texts, the fostering of sociability, and the building of community-based institutions.