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The article focuses on the history of the Grand Rapids Public Library (GRPL), which is located in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was founded in 1871. Its evolution, relocations, and services to patrons, including traveling branches and bookmobiles, throughout the years are discussed. Some of the buildings where the library was housed including the Ledyard and Ryerson buildings are also mentioned.

The article explores the 19th century art history-related collections of the Eastlake Library of the National Gallery art museum in London, England. Topics discussed include the establishment of the library of British painter Charles Lock Eastlake, the bibliographical texts acquired by the library such as the works of art historians Rudolph Weigel and Luigi Lanzi, and a comparison between the Eastlake Library and the library constructed by art collector Leopoldo Cicognara.

The article discusses the establishment of a public art and archaeology library by art collector Jacques Doucet in Paris, France in the early 20th century. Topics explored include the 18th century art collection of Doucet which consisted of sculptures, prints, and decorative objects, the involvement of librarian René-Jean of the Union centrale des Arts décoratifs (UCAD) in the development of the library, and a brief overview of the readership and visitors recorded by the library.

The article examines the principles upon which the public library operated in the 19th and early 20th Century. Gilles Deleuze’s philosophic work on the disciplinary and control societies is used as a theoretical framework to highlight the forms of governance that have been used in the last couple centuries. A discourse analysis is conducted of sample articles from the first forty years of the Library Journal. The article documents how librarians played a role in normalizing patron behaviour by associating the concept of the good citizen with a series of practices, including reading, abstention from the consumption of alcohol, homogeneity, order, acceptance of class status, and self-reliance.

In 1942, a library official in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city’s inhabitants to ‘read for victory’, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country’s political and civic elites to encourage the nation’s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified during the Second World War. The public library service was utilised by civic leaders, library officials and publishing trade personnel to aid the country’s war effort. The article argues that negative attitudes regarding mass reading tastes remained largely static, despite recognition that the conflict drew people to the written word for relaxation and escapism. Using the naval city of Portsmouth as a case study, this article charts the activities of the city’s public library authorities and the borrowing habits of its readers to reveal that while many people borrowed books in order to distract themselves from the conflict, the city’s strategic importance ensured that many citizens also read in order to facilitate their preparedness for war service, whether that be on the home front or overseas. The article argues that while, in common with national trends, many of Portsmouth’s citizens used libraries to obtain books to help distract them from the war, many remained eager to make use of the service for educational purposes, unlike the majority of the nation’s library users, whose interest in this aspect of library provision rapidly waned as the war progressed. The article concludes that the public library service was viewed as a central plank in the war effort and that library officials worked continuously to ensure that it remained so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the sociopolitical principles upon which the public library operated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Gilles Deleuze's philosophic work on the disciplinary and control societies is used as a theoretical framework to highlight the forms of governance that have been used in the last two centuries. A discourse analysis is conducted of sample articles from the first 40 years of the Library Journal. This article documents the role librarians played in normalizing patron behaviour by associating the concept of the good citizen with a series of practices including reading, abstention from alcohol, order, acceptance of class status, and self-reliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This biennial review of the writings on the history of libraries, librarianship, and information surveys about two hundred publications that were published in 2014 and 2015. The essay is divided into a number of specific sections, including academic and public libraries, biography, technical services, and the history of reading and publishing. It also contains a brief list of theses and dissertations that were completed in 2014 and 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sitting down to read a work of fiction was a well-established leisure activity within British society by the early-twentieth century but one that was mainly enjoyed by the country's more leisured classes. After the First World War, however, changes to the publishing industry's working practices, coupled with the growth of the "open access" system in public libraries in the 1920s and the spread of twopenny libraries in the 1930s, created a new type of reader, drawn principally from the country's working-class communities. This article reveals that the spread of the working-class book-reading habit prompted a series of discussions among the country's cultural elites, publishers, and public and commercial librarians regarding how that social group engaged with the written word. Many of these commentators were highly disparaging of the working classes' reading and book-borrowing habits and, based on a prejudiced understanding of that social group's cultural capital, sought to influence the types of reading material available to them, particularly with regard to what was accessible in the country's public libraries. The article argues that while the outbreak of the Second World War may have tempered these discussions somewhat, class distinctions surrounding the reading habit continued to shape people's participation in it, thus revealing that even during a period when class divisions were supposedly blurring, attitudes toward social class and leisure remained essentially unchanged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines the significant events in the history of the public libraries in Georgia. Topics discussed include the development and management of the public library service in the state, the commitment of the library leaders and citizenry to free information throughout the state, the organization of libraries, and the reading programs of the libraries.

The author launched a project to virtually reconstruct the two successive libraries of Cardinal Mazarin in Paris. The first, maybe the largest book collection of the western world at that time (from 40,000 to 56,000 books), which was scattered during the Fronde in 1652; the second, which had been developed from 1653 and had been settled in a long gallery newly built in Mazarin’s palace, of which very few architectural elements remain today. The digital edition and the analysis of the seventeenth-century inventories are combined with research on the history of the Palais Mazarin, to better know the development, content, arrangement and transmission of the library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Biblioteca Augusta of Perugia is one of the earliest public libraries in Italy. Its core foundation is made up of the collection of Prospero Podiani, whose knowledge and interest in the book market led him to create one of the largest collections of sixteenth-century Italy, including some 300 incunabula. Panzanelli’s doctoral research approached documentary evidence pertaining to the collection in order to reconstruct the lively cultural context of the time and space it belonged to. Having transferred the incunabula data into the database Material Evidence in Incunabula, we can now offer a richer and more complex representation of the development and use of the collection, of the books’ survival, loss, and mobility, and of the methodology of the investigation involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unrecorded 'Proposals for Printing by Subscription a Compleat Catalogue of the Publick Library in Sion-College', issued in 1721, help to reveal the circumstances of publication and the impetus for William Reading's classified catalogue of the collections of Sion College Library, published in 1724. They also shed light on the relationship between the College and its Library Keeper and between Sion College Library and other libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of Australia’s first crime novel in 1830, Australians have read crime fiction for entertainment, for the reassurance that wrongdoers will be punished, and to test their deductive skills against those of their favourite sleuth. The novels, short stories and plays within the crime fiction genre that have been produced in Australia between colonial times and the present day also offer opportunities to investigate a particular place or a particular time. Indeed, many crime fiction writers have mastered the art of recreating settings in both rural and metropolitan landscapes. The details provided within these works ultimately reveal a culprit (usually a murderer), yet they also outline the availability of certain products, bus and train timetables, the floor plans of local hotels or world-famous buildings and numerous other particulars, thus providing a rich, if surprising, source of material for the merely curious and the professional researcher. Crime fiction stories set within libraries present a history of the information services profession. This paper demonstrates how crime fiction can provide an important supplement to more traditional historical sources, with a focus on how the genre has documented some of the major changes within libraries over the last 75 years, since 1939. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the study of public libraries in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the light of current resources and policies in the Province. This study identifies the historical development and financial factors which have made the library services available to the public. Public libraries from all over the province including the 14 branch libraries at district level working under Directorate of Archives and Libraries have been covered. The data has been obtained through questionnaires, field trips, government documents and Directories of Archives and Libraries (DAL). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a historical overview of the processes and changes experienced by libraries of all types in Montenegro during the past twenty-five years, as well as their current state. Major aspects of library work are covered: the general situation, legislation, buildings and equipment, collections, services, personnel, and automation. The period from 1989 to 2014 is characterized by a stream of social and economic turbulences as well as by rapid changes due to developments in information and communications technology. Libraries in Montenegro are keeping pace with developments in the library field generally, the National Library of Montenegro (NLM) being the primary moving force in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview of the development of Kosovan libraries and literature between the years 1990 to 1999, one of the most difficult decades in the county's history. During this time, both Kosovo's libraries and its Albanian people suffered under the effects of extreme political unrest. In addition to analyzing this period of social turmoil, the paper provides a brief history of Kosovan libraries, the oppression of the Albanians during the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo, and an overview of the country's contemporary libraries and their vision for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the history of libraries in Belarus, including the library network development and its current structure. The paper uses data analyses of official state statistics, normative and unpublished legal documents, and scientific research conducted by the National Library of Belarus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the rapid growth in the number of women employed in English public libraries in the years between the outbreak of World War I and the census of 1931, building on earlier work which highlighted the long-term causes that led women to view the library workplace as respectable in the long nineteenth century. The article argues that the demographic upheaval caused by World War I, the provisions of the Public Libraries Act of 1919, the library-building activity of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and the library employment advocacy of the Central Bureau for the Employment of Women completed the feminization of English public librarianship during the first third of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the two decades following the end of the Second World War, the public library was promoted on a global scale by organizations such as UNESCO and the various librarians who worked with it. This article explores the global public library discourse that was shaped and promoted by UNESCO, placing this discourse within its historical context of the Cold War, decolonization, modernization, and internationalism. It also briefly examines some aspects of the work that UNESCO undertook to promote the public library in developing nations. While much of this work was well intentioned, global public library development was very much both a product and captive of its context. The work of UNESCO and the librarians who worked with the organization is a significant and fascinating chapter in library history that illuminates not only the evolution of library thought, but also illuminates the global work and thinking of international associations in the crucial decades of decolonization and the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on Jewish Public Library (JPL). It offers a history of JPL which is located in Montreal, Quebec that aims to provide and promote literature among Jews and Canadian people. It reflects on cultural dynamism and development of Jewish life in the 20th and 21st centuries. The author relates his first exposure to the Library wherein he was an undergraduate student at McGill University.

The article offers the author's view on the history of Jewish Public Library of Montreal which contains the largest circulating Judaica collection in North America. He reflects on the necessity of library among Jews citing the Sefer which is a library that belonged to every member of the Jewish faith. He concluded that reading enables people to share experiences with other people wherein libraries are the living repositories of the communal experiences.

This article looks at the library borrowing records of Kidderminster Municipal Library at a time of economic decline in the main industry of the town - carpet weaving. It illustrates the limitations of the early libraries following the 1850 Public Libraries Act through a local study. It examines how the borrowing records recorded in a surviving issue book reflect trends in the popularity of reading materials and, in particular, growing interest in migration to London and emigration abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The Cranston Library, Reigate, is a remarkable example of an early eighteenth-century parish library, which retains almost all of its original collection in its original location. It was founded by Revd Andrew Cranston in 1701 and was established as a charitable trust in 1708. It was the only library specifically exempted from the provisions of the 1708/09 Parochial Libraries Act. From the start it operated as a public lending library and, until the establishment of the Surrey County Library Service in the 1920s, it provided intellectual stimulus for all the people of Reigate, not just the clergy. The collection is not entirely theological, but contains some 2350 volumes on a wide range of subjects. The Library's records of donors, borrowers, and trustees, and the books themselves, provide a fascinating insight into the intellectual climate of the period. In the twenty-first century we endeavour to maintain the Library in good condition as a jewel of the local heritage, and as an academic resource for scholars. All our trustees and helpers are volunteers and we have no financial endowment behind us. We are therefore reliant on the generosity of our supporters and the good offices of the Reigate Decorative and Fine Arts Society and the Cowlishaw conservation workshop to achieve our aims. The opportunities and pitfalls of the digital age present the current trustees with many new challenges as we try to balance the demands of access with security, and preservation with utilization. We take inspiration from our founder and seek to ensure that the Library should flourish for at least another three hundred years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the literature of the field of U.S. library history in the years 2008 and 2009. Particular focus is given to what the author sees as the historian's task of re-evaluating conventional wisdom regarding past events. It is suggested that the overall quality of the field's scholarship is improving as library historians become more attentive to primary sources and larger historical frameworks. Special libraries, public libraries, and academic libraries are also discussed.

Reading education has been high on the public policy agenda in the United States. This article addresses the question of why public and school libraries have not been actively involved in legislative efforts to promote children's reading development. An historical perspective on the place of libraries in current reading education policy in the United States is provided, and two possibilities are assessed -- 1) that libraries have changed, shifting in their institutional identity, and 2) that conceptions of the reading process and the best instructional practices have undergone a dramatic transformation in the wake of the cognitive revolution. The author concludes that newer models of reading focus on cognition and the sociocultural contexts in which literacy occurs, and justify greater attention to the role of libraries in children's print literacy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1963, the composer Benjamin Britten and the tenor Peter Pears built a library at their home, the Red House in Aldeburgh. A venue for music rehearsal, it also accommodated an ever-increasing number of books, printed scores, literary and music manuscripts, rare volumes of early music, and many items of fine art. Originally built as a private library and music room, it attracted the attention of a number of readers in the mid-1970s before opening officially as a public research centre in 1980. Drawing upon examples from the collection, and on interviews with former staff and colleagues of Britten and Pears, this article focuses on the historical development of the Library. The article also details how, with the acquisition of further material such as retrieved manuscripts, recordings, concert ephemera, and costume and set designs - all of which disclose information about both musicians' careers - the Library began to face the ongoing problem of providing adequate storage for its wide-ranging collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on various libraries in New York City (NYC). It mentions that New York Public Library (NYPL), opened in 1911 and organized by John Jacob Astor, James Lenox, and Samuel Tilden, have a main reading room, huge chandeliers, and collections displayed at the Gottesman Exhibition Hall. It also highlights the Frick Art Reference Library which began from the art collections of industrialist Henry Clay Frick and requires photo identification (ID) for first time visitors.

The main theme of the paper is the selection of fiction in British public libraries in the period between the two World Wars of the mid-twentieth century. There is a discussion of the legal background, including the role of socially conservative politicians in influencing, or attempting to influence, what was published and what was made available through public libraries. Against this background there is a more detailed analysis and discussion, based on contemporary professional literature, of the attitudes of professional librarians towards the moral dimension of the selection of fiction. It is concluded that, in general, librarians took a pragmatic line, trying to provide a wide-ranging stock while necessarily taking account of both political and social pressures. It is suggested that by 1939 the moral climate was beginning to change, and that many professionals were coming round to the view that moral censorship was undesirable except in extreme cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the impact that two unique library models have had on the history of French public library services. The author explains that the term "model library" includes an important ideological component. The influence of the model library on the transformation of public libraries in France is also discussed. The article focuses on the second half of the 20th century, which the author states was an important period of transition for French libraries. The article also discusses when, why, and how the model library emerged.

After the Second World War Denmark, Norway, and Sweden implemented systems to compensate authors whose books were lent out from public libraries without charge. Finland waited until the beginning of the 1960s before it established its own system, which differed in some important respects from its Scandinavian counterparts. For one thing, it did not tie the amount of compensation to the circulation of the books, and it limited the compensation to authors of belles-lettres (until the 1980s). This article describes the birth and development of the Finnish system and seeks to explain its special features by putting it in the larger cultural historical context. The controversy concerning the right of non-fiction writers to receive compensation is also described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although public libraries have been generally characterized as 'repositories of public memory' or 'memory institutions', along with museums and archives, little specific work has been undertaken in Australia into how the public library performs this role: how a public library responds to the development of historical consciousness within its particular community, to the vicissitudes of public remembering, and also public forgetting. This article considers these questions through a case study of the Tasmanian Public Library in Hobart, Tasmania, and its changing responses to a particular text, convict author Henry Savery's The Hermit in Van Diemen's Land: from the Colonial Times (1829), one of the first books printed in the Colony. This article will suggest that the book The Hermit in Van Diemen's Land played a role as a lieu de mémoire within the Tasmanian community, the nature of that role changing as a consequence of a variety of factors over more than a century. The circumstances surrounding the acquisition and subsequent disposal of a copy of The Hermit by the Tasmanian Public Library are examined, in the context of the contested and changing value placed on the text by the institution and members of the community. Such an analysis of the manifestation of social memory in the context of the public library enriches our understanding of the ways in which a small interpretative community negotiated its difficult history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main controversies in the world of librarianship in the latter half of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century was the role of fiction in the public libraries of North America and United Kingdom. To what extent was this concern translated to other parts of the English-speaking world? This article explores, from the available evidence, the attitudes towards fiction held by officials of the Raffles Library, Singapore. It suggests the library tended to be very liberal in its views. To understand why this was the case, the article argues, involves an understanding of the notion, commonly held at the time, of human degeneration from prolonged exposure to tropical environments, and the colonialist reaction to this predicament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the history of Dunedin Public Library in Dunedin, New Zealand. According to the article, the library was opened to public on December 2, 1908. Together with the council in the Province of Otago, the library has become the home to books and libraries in the country for a long time. With the leadership of John Hislop, Inspector Schools for the Otago Education Board, those books have also been placed in schools under the management of teachers, the time when there was no other center for the district.

The article looks at the history when public libraries were able to survive and operate despite the effect of financial crisis in Florida. During the economic crisis of the 1930s, libraries were able to face the crisis by cutting budgets in acquisitions, services, hours, and staff. In addition, despite the dangerous effect of the economic downturns in 1970s Florida has been able to weather them showing impressive growth and development from 1970s to the early 2000s.

The article examines public libraries in India. A comprehensive history of the Indian library system is given beginning with the sixth century A.D. and ending with the 21st century. Special focus is given the Indian government's actions, studies and five-year plans that occurred during the 20th century. Also discussed are the Sinha Committee appointed in 1957 and the Raja Ram Mohan Roy Library Foundation (RRRLF) of 1972. The author concludes that a massive investment in Indian libraries is needed in order to ensure access to all the citizens of India.

This article begins with a brief historical review of the establishment of the first public libraries in the province of Quebec and the difficulties and challenges they faced. The Catholic Church played a significant role in library evolution. The article then relates the situation of public libraries in Quebec today. After analyzing their current levels of performance, the article concludes that, although Quebec's libraries have improved, they continue to be held back compared to other Canadian public libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the research and publications on the history of Spanish public libraries (defined as free libraries run by public administration) covering the period beginning with the birth and development of public reading centres in the eighteenth century up to the present day. Three groups of researchers are identified: first, professional librarians, characterized by their erudition; secondly, general interest historians and historians of education, who began to apply the 'scientific' method and the systematic use of primary sources; and thirdly, university lecturers in the area of library and information science, whose work in the library history field has attained a certain maturity. The article concludes by highlighting the need to delve deeper into these studies and form research groups to that end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the availability of books and other reading materials in Monroe County, Indiana, through 1850. It examines both unpublished and published primary sources as well as secondary sources to reveal that books and reading were part of life on the western frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Houston Public Library operated as a racially segregated system until 1953, when it quietly changed its policy to one of token integration. Occurring some seven years before the Houston Independent School District began to desegregate, the public library's policy change depended on a few key individuals. Drawing on the library's records of discussions and events, this article traces the history of a major shift in philosophy and practice at a large urban public library in the U.S. South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]