Description
Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive history of American public school librarianship.
Can I get a library pass? Over the past 120 years, millions of American K12 public school students have asked that question. Still, we know little about the history of public school libraries, which over the decades were pulled together and managed by hundreds of thousands of school librarians. In American Public School Librarianship, Wayne A. Wiegand recounts the unseen history of both school libraries and their librarians.
Why, Wiegand asks, did school librarianship turn out the way it did? And what can its history tell us about limitations and opportunities in the coming decades of the twenty-first century? Addressing issues of race, social class, gender, and sexual orientation (among others) as they affected American public school librarianship throughout its history, Wiegand explores how libraries were transformed by the Great Depression, the civil rights era, Lyndon Johnson''s Gr
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American Public School Librarianship: A History provides us with a richly sourced account of the development of a key pedagogic site in schools and of many of the personal, institutional, and political reasons why they do—and do not do—certain things. This certainly makes it a valuable contribution.In a time when honest, thoughtful, and creative cultural resources are being limited and removed from educational sites, the multiple roles that school libraries play in these conflicts become even more important. American Public School Librarianship: A History helps us understand why.
—Educational Policy
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction. A Profession with No Memory
Chapter 1. Inheriting Pre-Twentieth-Century Traditions
Chapter 2. "To Prove By Her Work": Establishing the Profession of School, 1900-1930
Chapter 3. Weathering the Great Depression and World War II, 1930-1950
Chapter 4. Organizing the American Association of School Librarians, 1930-1952
Chapter 5. Consolidating Gains, 1952-1963
Chapter 6. "The Golden Era of School Library Development," 1964-1969
Chapter 7. Battles for Professional Jurisdiction, 1969-1981
Chapter 8. "Information Literacy": Old Wine in New Bottles, 1981-2000
Chapter 9. A New Century: Adapting to Shifting Educational Environments
Chapter 10. Hindsight: Factors Influencing the Contours of School Librarianship
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography of Primary Sources
Index
