"Russian-Jewish Immigrants" by Nelson Beck

I was very surprised that this author directly attacked the theses of their colleagues. Some would perhaps call this approach harsh or inappropriate, but I thought it was very refreshing to have someone directly challenge and try to disprove other people’s work on library history. This is the standard approach in all other kinds of history, and it seems as though this is only the second instance where the statues quo or the previously accepted models of library history have been challenged, the first example being Harris’s work, I think overall he did a very good job in at least poking holes in Harris and other library historians who try to oversimplify merely for the sake of coherence or a better story of library history.

But, I must say that while the approach was appropriately academic, the use of one single micro-society in New York is far from enough to completely turn me off from Harris’s analysis of the situation. Fine, there was one exception that the author contends was based solely on the internal cultural practices of a community. In my mind, that the only exception Beck elaborated on was culture-based tells me that all the rest must have had cultures that did not have a strong educational background. Even though he did address the fact that he is not making a statement about other cultures, he really is just by choosing to direct all his research to one cultural community. Given that there were several other ethnic communities in New York at this time, all scrambling within a very small radius to carve out their own space, I wonder why he chose this one community. Was it really because Russian Jews were singular in their library usage and he is playing dumb as far as that fact? If that were the case, Beck would have to admit that the overall trend does side with Harris’s interpretation that the overruling influence was that of the authoritarian librarian. Although it is just a hunch, I think it was the case that Russian Jews were the exception to the rule, simply because of the convincing statistics that Beck used in his article about their top-notch achievements. Since Russian Jews were probably the exception, I still place Harris on a higher pedestal than Beck as far as getting the story right. Of course, Harris brought his own biases and issues in to his writing, Beck rightly points out, but then so does every single historian that has ever made any kind of historical argument, including Beck himself. His generalization about Jewish culture as being singularly education-oriented itself could be contested. What about class issues within the Russian-Jewish community? What about gender disparities between who used the library and did not within that community? Once someone begins to point fingers at other historians for what they have not considered, that train of thought could be applied to everyone and render all historians’ efforts obsolete.