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Wiegand thoroughly studies the growth of four public libraries in the midwest as the foundation for his book, tracking each through its own respective birth in the late 1800s through the 1956 and the passing of the Federal Library Services Act (LSA), which gave library access of one kind or another to every citizen of the United States. He reviews the library associations which banded together to found these community places in their small towns, the librarians who came and went and the significant changes they made, the circulation rates for each library over the years, and the significant forces behind the growth and development of each library.
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Almost a third of the book is dedicated to a chapter on Public Library collections, both nationally and in the towns he chose to study. It covers initial collections and the changes made to them over the years, as well as books that were popular overall and in each of the studied libraries. To contrast this he also includes national lists of banned books or books that courts sought censorship on. These lists he compares to the collections of each of the four libraries so see how many – or how few – banned books each would have.
His study is highly detailed. A majority of each of the chapters is little more than a stream of words relating chronologically the events and changes at each of the library. It is not uncommon for there to be whole paragraphs, and even the occasional almost-page, of little more than book titles. At times reading Main Street Public Library is like reading a timeline sans nicely arranged date notches. It feel occasionally like a list and often like a history book.
And yet as draining as that is at certain points, Wiegand’s book is wonderfully interesting, especially for someone who is drawn to libraries and in the importance of the public place or even literature for the shaping of culture. Anything that so often finds itself square in the center of the life of a town, as libraries are wont to do, can be sure to have an affect of the community around it. However, what Wiegand discovers is that it is not the literature that is in a library that has a huge affect, but it is instead the space the library provides.
After all, the majority of the books checked out from the four libraries throughout their histories is the same kind of popular fiction that pervades library atmospheres today. And while there is incredible merit even to reading fiction, Wiegand discovers that, despite vast differences in collections – he says they displayed “consistency in their inconsistency” (171) – the people of the towns determined the collections and not the other way around. Thus the collections were mostly fiction, although non-fiction still held a prominent place. Scientific books occupied a very small percentage of the shelves and were checked out even less. The libraries were more to serve entertainment purposed that those of strictly gaining a quantifiable knowledge, they were instead important to the extent that they provided ample public space that was an ideal, safe arena for the sharing of ideas and beliefs. They provide the places where a diverse array of people can meet and live and read together, brought there by the similar love they all held for the books on the shelves. They were somewhere removed ever-so-slightly from the tensions and desires and feuds of the world, where races and creeds and opinions were just a little more equal inside the doors than they were outside.
At first it may seem to a book lover that this is a disappointing result after years of libraries being present in our towns. We want to see the literature we love changing the lives of the people around it in visible ways. Yet after a bit of thought we begin to realize that perhaps this is a better result. Who are we to determine what books do to people, anyway? It is better for the buildings that house our beloved books to be conversation places were the ideas and thoughts of those books can be talked about and argued over and laughed at. That way, the learning jumps off the two-dimensional page and into a three-dimensional world.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
 Reading for the Common Good From ERB Editor Christopher Smith "This book will inspire, motivate and challenge anyone who cares a whit about the written word, the world of ideas, the shape of our communities and the life of the church." -Karen Swallow Prior Enter your email below to sign up for our weekly newsletter & download your FREE copy of this ebook! |
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