"Books for new citizens" by Elaine Fain

This latest work that is from Elaine Fain I found thought provoking and a good overall historical look at immigrants and books in the big cities. While she did bring the small-town libraries into the discussion a little through Carnegie, once again I am rather puzzled at why the Boston and New York library systems are those consistently used for most kinds of library history research. What about the growth of the American library in the far West, even San Francisco and the Chinese immigrant populations? I am guessing the switch from a symbol-based literature to an alphabetic one would have a different storyline than the switch from Italian to English literature by immigrants in New York. But, I think I should refrain from the all-too-common mistake of faulting a writer for the book they didn’t write. I simply wanted to comment on the disheartening lack of American Western influence in what we have read so far.

Fain seems to waffle in the history of immigrants and libraries. One the one hand, she says that the “overall public library impact” upon assimilation was “slight,” while she chooses to end her article with very uplifting and moving excerpts from people who recalled the very great influence the library had upon their childhood in America. So, were libraries important or not, either on a large scale or small? It seems she said outright that on a large scale it was not important, but in the lives of some children it “supplied the spark” to launch them into American life. I don’t think she even knows her own opinion regarding the subject, but was trying to give an even-handed account of the history.

Except for Fain’s overall judgment of the library’s impact, not much of what she wrote seemed surprising given the larger movements in American history regarding immigration, the First World War, and nativism. But, what I did like was that she gave voice to the few people in library studies who realized and disliked the nativist, condescending tone of library culture. It is heartening to know that not everyone was on the WASP bandwagon in the library field.