SUN 6/26 Executive Committee meeting | 8:00-10:00 am | Hilton Riverside, Pelican room
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SUN 6/26 COSWL: Right Here I See My Own Books: The Women's Library at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | Morial Convention Center - Room 350-351 (co-sponsored with LHRT)
SUN 6/26 Invited Speakers Program | 1:30-3:00 pm | Mariott at Convention Center, New Levee room
The Past as Prologue: Papers in Honor of 135 Years of the American Library Association, As the American Library Association celebrates its 135th year as a professional association, it is fitting that the invited speakers’ panel celebrate a range of topics. The panelists, all active members of the Round Table who have taken a leadership role in the organization, present papers on an individual librarian, on the exploration of library history itself, and on one of the prevailing issues in librarianship: intellectual freedom. This panel is a festschrift to honor ALA—a celebration of the diversity and range of the study of library history, and a way of honoring the parent organization and celebrating the Library History Round Table.
What Hannah Taught Me: Researching Librarians in the Lives of Their Communities, by Bernadette Lear, Behavioral Science and Education Librarian, Penn State Harrisburg Library
Abstract: Wayne Wiegand has posited that libraries must be studied within the lives of their users—a perspective which involves the examination of how people have experienced books, libraries, and reading, as well as traditional institutional history. An important corollary to that is that individual librarians must be studied within the lives of their unique communities. The career of Hannah Packard James (1835-1903), a former vice-president of the American Librarian Association is an example of how her environment—her upbringing on the outskirts of Brahmin Boston, her involvement with a variety of social causes, the differences between the two communities (Newton, MA, and Wilkes-Barre, PA) she served—show a fascinating case study of older women activists’ ambivalence toward social change during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
The History in our Stories: Documenting the “Hidden in Plain Sight” History of Youth Services Librarianship, by Christine Jenkins, Associate Professor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Abstract: In 2000 the Library History Round Table celebrated its 50th anniversary with the publication of Library History Research in America, an essay collection for Libraries & Culture, later published in book form by the Library of Congress Center for the Book. My essay for that collection documented the historiography of youth services librarianship. Although considered the classic success story of American libraries, I noted that this specialization had received surprisingly little attention from library history scholars. My paper explores recent developments in this history. What have 21st century historians discovered? What sources have they used? How might their work inform future research in the history of youth services librarianship?
A Look Back at The Speaker: The People Have Spoken!, by Mark McCallon, Assistant Director, Library and Information Resources, Abilene Christian University
Abstract: ALA's attempt at a film on the intellectual freedom and the First Amendment was met with controversy and indignation when it was shown at the 1977 ALA Annual Conference in Detroit. But what did those who were there really think about it? This presentation looks at the film from the perspectives of the ALA members who attended the screening and completed surveys and provided comments about the film and the subjects that it tried to address.
SUN 6/26 Research Forum | 3:30-5:30 pm | Doubletree Hotel, Rosedown A room
"The History of the Business Branch of the Newark Free Public Library,” by Ellen Pozzi, Rutgers University
"Collective Collections: Libraries and Labor,” by Joyce M. Latham, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
"English Public Libraries, Parliament and the Working Class: A Not-So Subtle Censorship Debate Within the British Parliamentary Debates of 1834 and 1850," by Sterling Joseph Coleman, Jr., Central State University,
"Reading for Those Who ‘Labor with Their Hands and Earn Their Living by the Sweat of Their Brows," by David M. Hovde and John W. Fitch
MON 6/27 Edward G. Holley Lecture | 10:30 am-12:00 pm | Morial Convention Center, Room 333
Ghosts and Shadows: Reading Race in the Woman’s Building Library of the World’s Columbian Exposition, by Sarah Wadsworth, Associate Professor of English, Marquette University
Abstract: Drawn from the forthcoming book Right Here I See My Own Books (coauthored with Dr. Wayne A. Wiegand, University of Massachusetts Press, January 2012), this lecture examines the impact of race on, and in, the 8,000-volume library of women’s texts assembled for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. It argues that writing by and (in a few cases) about African Americans and Native Americans offered an important “counter-site” to the Exposition’s exclusionary racial politics. By placing key texts in dialogue with the prevailing discourse of white, middle-class Protestant women, the lecture highlights the complexity of racial representation in this landmark collection of women’s texts.