Though this article is short, I was really impressed with the courage it took to write such a piece. Presumably, Harris’ audience would be those interested in libraries: librarians. And yet he attacks the story of American public libraries as comforting and those who adhere to it as those who ignored facts. I wonder what kind of response this received when it was originally published. It’s calling out for a paradigm shift in library history when those he addresses are the dominant paradigm! I thought his words on George Ticknor were well-written and much more realistic considering his social standing.
I especially think Harris got it right when he stated that while the goal may have been for Ticknor to use libraries to uplift the masses, it was only so they could become “more like himself.” This fleshes out I think a very good point that diversity was never a strong suit of library professionals or contributors. I think Harris is also right in accusing these men of not knowing or trying to know their audience of library users. How could they, when they were from social and economic backgrounds very different from the average user? That is like having a president write legislation for how a public schools must conduct their institutions, without ever being a public school attendee himself.
I do appreciate also that Harris brought up the exceedingly patronizing use of soft fiction to reel in the reader. This seems to corroborate with writers from the time who openly advocated this practice. Harris, however, uses the long eye of history and points out that this never worked, to the dismay of many such advocates. The end of the article touched on library history that I had not ever read about, and it interested me greatly that the idea of libraries as guardians of information is something that goes back more than 30 years. I had assumed it started with government disillusionment 30 - 40 years ago and had continued to this day. This was a greatly interesting article to read.
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