Part of Our Lives Part of Our Lives A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC LIBR ARY Wayne A. Wiegand 1 3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wiegand, Wayne A., 1946– Part of our lives : a people’s history of the American public library / Wayne A. Wiegand. pages cm ISBN 978–0–19–024800–0 (hardback) 1. Public libraries—United States—History. 2. Libraries—United States—Public opinion— History. 3. Public opinion—United States—History. 4. Library users—United States— Attitudes—History. 5. Public libraries—Social aspects—United States—History. 6. Libraries and community—United States—History. 7. Libraries and society—United States—History. 8. Books and reading—United States—History. I. Title. Z731.W734 2015 027.473—dc 3 2015014209 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To Shirl: Who introduced me to a world of love I never would have discovered by myself. June 19, 2015 Our Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary Contents Introduction: So Much More Than Information 1 1. “Improv’d the General Conversation of Americans”: Social Libraries before 1854 7 2. For “Plain People”: The American Public Library, 1854–1876 30 3. “The Best Reading for the Greatest Number at the Least Cost”: 1876–1893 53 4. “The Liberty to Read What They Will and When”: The Carnegie Era, 1893–1917 75 5. “Habitations on a Literary Map”: 1917–1929 106 6. “One Island of Refuge”: The Great Depression and World War II, 1929–1945 136 7. “Winning the Battles of Daily Life”: 1945–1964 165 8. “An Individual Meaning to Each User”: 1964–1980 193 9. “Library Paste Is a Precious Part of Social Glue”: 1981–2000 221 10. Information, Reading, and Place: 2001–Present 250 Acknowledgments 271 Notes 273 Index 311 INTRODUCTION So Much More Than Information It’s an indisputable fact—Americans love their public libraries. They always have, and evidence to support this statement abounds. First, the rhetoric: “The three most important documents a free society gives,” wrote author E. L. Doctorow in 1994, “are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.” “In this room,” Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough said as he swept his arm around the Tulsa Public Library’s auditorium in 1995, “we are at dead center in the absolute heart of the best institution in our society—the free library.” “The America I loved still exists,” said Kurt Vonnegut in 2005, albeit not in government or the media. “The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”1 Next, the research: A 2013 report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project noted that in the previous decade “every other major institution (government, churches, banks, corporations) has fallen in public esteem except libraries, the military, and first responders.” The study also found that 91 percent of those surveyed who were more than sixteen years old said libraries are “very” or “somewhat” important to their communities, and 98 percent identified their public library experience as “very” or “mostly positive.” Another Pew study found that 94 percent of parents believe libraries are important for their children, and 84 percent said this was because libraries develop a love of reading and books.2 Although in the 1980s many evangelists of information technology predicted the demise of public libraries by the turn of the century, as of this writing their numbers have not dropped. In fact, in 2012 the United