Greetings Library History Roundtable Members!
Thanks to all who joined us for LHRT Reads in 2025! We enjoyed our discussions and are excited to program next year's selections. What works would you like to explore? We'd love to hear from you and welcome your suggestions via this form. Please share your suggestions for films, books, sound recordings, exhibitions or other media that tell the stories of libraries and other related histories. We will consider every suggestion and look forward to hearing from you. Previous LHRT Reads selections are listed below.
We will be announcing next year's LHRT Reads selections early in the new year.
We wish you a wonderful winter season and a new year that's full of fun and inspiration!
Warm Regards,
Amanda Belantara & Michele Fenton
LHRT Reads Co-organizers
Previous LHRT Reads Selections by year
*The asterisk indicates that the author joined LHRT Reads for a Q&A
2021
*Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles
*E.J. Josey: Transformational Leader by Renate Chancellor
Freedom Libraries by Mike Selby
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer
*Regina Anderson Andrews: Harlem Renaissance Librarian by Etheline Whitmire
*Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe by Kathy Peiss
2022
The Meaning of the Library, Edited by Alice Crawford
*The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
Syria's Secret Library by Mike Thomson
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
2023
Toute la mémoire du monde by Alain Resnais
Apostles of Culture: The Public Librarian and American Society, 1876-1920 by Dee Garrison
*American Public School Librarianship: A History by Wayne A. Wiegand
*Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan
2024
*Public in Name Only: The 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In Demonstration by Brenda Mitchell-Powell
*Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver
The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann
*Torn from their Bindings: A Story of Art, Science, and the Pillaging of American University Libraries by Travis McDade
*The Dictionary People by Sarah Ogilvie
2025
*Us & The Night, directed by Audrey Lam
*In Silence or Indifference: Racism and Jim Crow Segregated Public School Libraries by Wayne Wiegand
*The Untold Story of Books: A Writer's History of Book Publishing by Michael Castleman
*The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss
------------------------------
Michele Fenton
Librarian I/Cataloger
Indiana State Library
Indianapolis, IN
mfenton@library.in.gov(317) 234-4937
------------------------------