Reclaiming the American Library Past: Writing the Women In (Information Management, Policy, and Services) - Softcover

Hildenbrand, Suzanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1567502342 ISBN 13: 9781567502343

Publisher: Praeger, 1996

Synopsis

This solid anthology makes a fine start at the effort in its title, ^IReclaiming the American Library Past: Writing the Women In^R. Like most good beginnings, it succeeds first by clarifying the status of the field and then by raising questions for subsequent scholars to ponder and pursue. -^IHistory of Education Quarterly ^RThe essays in this book contribute along several dimensions to the new scholarship on a profession and public service of vital importance for well over a century to American literacy, culture and invention. Their authors add to the individual and collective biographies of women who have founded and administered diverse institutions and taught succeeding generations of librarians. The worksites of influential women such as Anne Carroll Moore, Josephine Rathbone, and Grace Hebard, like the nameless paid and volunteer staff who have served as unrecognized catalogers and children's librarians, have varied. They range from the pioneering libraries and library schools of the settled East- including Brooklyn and the Harlem, Times Square, and Morningside Heights neighborhoods of Manhattan- the historically Black Howard University to the numberless small towns of the West. They include the raw A&M colleges of Arkansas, Utah, New Mexico, and similarly neglected centers of local and regional enlightenment.

About this title

From Library Journal

This anthology offers a variety of approaches to the history of women's roles in the evolution of librarianship in America. The first part provides several biographies of women influential in the development of programs and institutions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The second part includes surveys of the role gender played in such professional issues as pay, intellectual freedom, and library education. Hildenbrand's introduction provides a useful summary of the historiography of women's history and the model it provides for library history; her strongly feminist tone may be off-putting to some. The individual chapters range from the scholarly to the anecdotal, but overall the anthology is a creditable statement on the centrality of women in the development of American librarianship. Recommended for library history and women's studies collections.?Elizabeth Brice, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohio
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Suzanne Hildenbrand's essay provides the reader with the historical background to assess the articles which follow in the book. She places library history by and about women within the larger dimension of feminist studies."-Libraries and Culture

?Suzanne Hildenbrand's essay provides the reader with the historical background to assess the articles which follow in the book. She places library history by and about women within the larger dimension of feminist studies.?-Libraries and Culture

Edition details

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1567502342
• ISBN 13: 9781567502343
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 336