Tag Archives: Historical

Books, Programs, Services

Horse-Riding Librarians Were the Great Depression’s Bookmobiles

Majestic-Stallion

I love bookmobiles, and the idea of librarians using horses to provide great service is just cool!

(This article is from Smithsonian.com, by Eliza McGraw)

During the Great Depression, a New Deal program brought books to Kentuckians living in remote areas

“Their horses splashed through iced-over creeks. Librarians rode up into the Kentucky mountains, their saddlebags stuffed with books, doling out reading material to isolated rural people. The Great Depression had plunged the nation into poverty, and Kentucky—a poor state made even poorer by a paralyzed national economy—was among the hardest hit.

The Pack Horse Library initiative, which sent librarians deep into Appalachia, was one of the New Deal’s most unique plans. The project, as implemented by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), distributed reading material to the people who lived in the craggy, 10,000-square-mile portion of eastern Kentucky. The state already trailed its neighbors in electricity and highways. And during the Depression, food, education and economic opportunity were even scarcer for Appalachians.

They also lacked books: In 1930, up to 31 percent of people in eastern Kentucky couldn’t read. Residents wanted to learn, notes historian Donald C. Boyd. Coal and railroads, poised to industrialize eastern Kentucky, loomed large in the minds of many Appalachians who were ready to take part in the hoped prosperity that would bring. “Workers viewed the sudden economic changes as a threat to their survival and literacy as a means of escape from a vicious economic trap,” writes Boyd.

This presented a challenge: In 1935, Kentucky only circulated one book per capita compared to the American Library Association standard of five to ten, writes historian Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer,. It was “a distressing picture of library conditions and needs in Kentucky,” wrote Lena Nofcier, who chaired library services for the Kentucky Congress of Parents and Teachers at the time.

Continue reading Horse-Riding Librarians Were the Great Depression’s Bookmobiles →

Academic, Conference

European Studies Research Forum at ALA Annual Conference in Chicago

(Even if you are not attending ALA, it’s good to know some of the cool things going on! You can always check the hastag: #ALALeftBehind to follow all kinds of good discussions during the conference!)

“Saturday, June 24th, 4:30-5:30pm
Chicago Hilton, Stevens Center, Salon A-5

Sponsored by the ACRL West European Studies Research and Planning Committee

PRESENTATIONS:

Gordon B. Anderson (University of Minnesota)

Books under Suspicion: Identifying Nazi-looted books in German library collections

Despite the persistent image of the Nazis being burners of books, in fact they valued books enormously and used them in countless ways to achieve their ideological and racial objectives.  Being pathological kleptocrats, the Nazis stole everything from their enemies. During the years 1933-1945 they looted millions upon millions of books from personal and institutional libraries for deposit into Nazi-run “research institutes” and for acquisition by German libraries.  While settling many issues, the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, also opened up issues long ignored, especially the issues in restoring looted property and wealth. In late 1998, 44 governments (including Germany) and 13 NGOs adopted the Washington Principles on Holocaust Era Assets, which included the restitution of looted books and archives. Since 2002, with German government support, libraries across Germany have undertaking projects to identify looted books in their collections and make amends.  In the spring of 2017 I visited several German libraries, and this paper is a report on their ongoing efforts and the dynamics of the process. I offer a preliminary assessment of their efforts to untangle and de-mystify the origins of many of their holdings.

Continue reading European Studies Research Forum at ALA Annual Conference in Chicago →

Books, General, Special

Librarian discovers rare page from medieval priests’ handbook

Books can hold all sorts of unexpected treasures, and this discovery is one of them!

At the University of Reading in England, special collections librarian Erica Delbecque discovered a page leaf that came “from a medieval priests’ handbook that had been printed by William Caxton, who introduced the printing press to England.” The paper had been “pasted into another book for the undignified purpose of reinforcing its spine.”

The page leaf is approximately 540 years old and was part of a handbook for priests written in Latin called  “Sarum Ordinal” or “Sarum Pye” which was used by priests for “instructions on what biblical readings to use and how to dress at Mass on different religious feast days for English saints.”

Read more about this discovery here!

Research, Resources

“The Jacket from Dachau” wins award for excellence in reference services

 

The Jacket from Dachau

From RUSA, by By Leighann Wood :

“The Jacket from Dachau: One Survivor’s Search for Justice, Identity, and Home” Libguide was selected as the 2017 winner of the ReferenceUSA Award for Excellence in Reference and Adult Services for its well-organized and accessible presentation of information about the Holocaust.

Spearheaded by librarians Leslie Ward and Christine (Mi Seon) Kim of the Kurt R. Schmeller Library, Queensborough Community College, New York, “The Jacket from Dachau” Libguide was developed to accompany the exhibition at the Kupferberg Holocaust Center of Queensborough Community College. The exhibition focuses on the jacket worn by Benzion Pereseck, a 15-year-old Lithuanian boy, during his time at Dachau Concentration Camp. Themes of justice, identity, perseverance, and home are woven throughout the exhibit evoking an emotional, historical narrative. Continue reading “The Jacket from Dachau” wins award for excellence in reference services →

Books, Resources

Six thousand digitized kid’s books are available to you!

5 Little PIgs

Check out this material from Open Culture!

“We can learn much about how a historical period viewed the abilities of its children by studying its children’s literature. Occupying a space somewhere between the purely didactic and the nonsensical, most children’s books published in the past few hundred years have attempted to find a line between the two poles, seeking a balance between entertainment and instruction. However, that line seems to move closer to one pole or another depending on the prevailing cultural sentiments of the time. And the very fact that children’s books were hardly published at all before the early 18th century tells us a lot about when and how modern ideas of childhood as a separate category of existence began….

Where the boundaries for kids’ literature had once been narrowly fixed by Latin grammar books and Pilgrim’s Progress, by the end of the 19th century, the influence of science fiction like Jules Verne’s, and of popular supernatural tales and poems, prepared the ground for comic books, YA dystopias, magician fiction, and dozens of other children’s literature genres we now take for granted, or—in increasingly large numbers—we buy to read for ourselves. Enter the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature here, where you can browse several categories, search for subjects, authors, titles, etc, see full-screen, zoomable images of book covers, download XML versions, and read all of the over 6,000 books in the collection with comfortable reader views. Find more classics in our collection, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices.”

(Read the rest of this article by clicking here!)