What Have We Learned and Where Are We Going? Some Paths to Library History Seminar IX,1995 and BeyondAuthor(s): Wayne A. WiegandSource: Libraries & Culture, Vol. 26, No. 1, Reading & Libraries I (Winter, 1991), pp. 46-48Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25542321 .

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What Have We Learned and Where Are We Going? Some Paths to Library History Seminar IX, 1995 and Beyond

Wayne A. Wiegand

I am delighted to summarize this conference, but I hasten to add that I

will not be giving it a grade. I think that would be presumptuous. I certainly am in no position to grade the many experts in library history who have

convinced me they know a lot more about their special

areas than I do.

What I would like to do instead is to recognize and celebrate a commit

ment to our craft that brings us

together every five years, and to acknowl

edge a refreshing diversity of interests that is now driving our scholarship, reflected in the program of Library History Seminar VIII. Both, I think, also mirror the interests and accomplishments of Dave Kaser, a valued

senior member of our craft and the library historian to whom this seminar

is dedicated.

First, however, commitment to our craft. Let me start with Haynes

McMullen, to whom we dedicated Library History Seminar VII in 1984.

Remember how he told us at that time that he was going to retire from

library history scholarship, that he would probably not be frequenting our

meetings in the future, and that he was going to content himself with just

reading library history instead of researching and writing it? It is a pleasure to have you back, Haynes; we gladly note your recent publication in LQ

and welcome the news that you are thinking about collecting the statistical

research on which you have been working for many years into a larger

work. Let me also acknowledge those participants who have come from

other countries to join our group: Peter Kamber from Switzerland,

Michael Knoche from Germany, Jan Partridge from Australia, Paul

Sturges from the United Kingdom, Pertti Vakkari from Finland, and Peter

McNally and Louis-George Harvey from Canada. You add a much needed

international flavor to our meetings and we have all been enriched by your

Wayne A. Wiegand is professor, School of Library and Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Libraries and Culture, Vol. 26, No. 1, Winter 1991 ?1991 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713

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47

participation. And let me also recognize just a few of those for whom this

library history seminar is their first, like Art Gunn, Jean Preer, Mary

Rosenbloom, and Kathryn Snell. We trust you had an intellectually stimu

lating experience, and we look forward to seeing you at future seminars.

Finally, let me recognize the kind of commitment to attending these seminars

that is evident in so many ways. I cite only one example?Pamela Spence

Richards's willingness to endure a 22-hour Greyhound bus ride to get here

on Wednesday (only to have to face another 22-hour ride after the conclu

sion of my remarks). All of this augurs well for Library History Seminar IX.

Second, a refreshing diversity. We had strong hints of this diversity in

the remarks of our three keynote speakers. Marcus McCorison reviewed

for us the role of bibliography in the context of our theme, "Reading &

Libraries." Harvey Graff discussed how literacy and libraries have his

torically fit into the life patterns of human beings. Carl Kaestle concen

trated on the subject of reading as a focus for reviewing the historical roles

of schools, libraries, and the publishing industries. Just as the keynotes reflected diversity, so did the individual session papers. A glance at our

program verifies this observation. We looked for our professional roots in

the person of Justus Lipsius and an analysis of eighteenth-century Ger man scholarship. We listened to two papers on forms of information con

trol, one of them concentrating on

Republican Rome, the other on the

Soviet Union; we also looked at the librarianship of African-Americans

during the first half of this century from the perspective of the Faith Cabin

libraries and in the person of Monroe Nathan Work.

We examined attitudes toward literacy from the perspective of twentieth

century Appalachian America and turn-of-the-eighteenth-century Lucerne,

Switzerland; we were served prosopographical lessons in American library

history from data generated on trustees of the New York Public Library and professional employees of the Library of Congress. We reviewed the

library lives of England's Thomas James and France's Jean Baptiste Col bert and scrutinized reading patterns among nineteenth-century New York

Society Library patrons and turn-of-the-twentieth-century Roman Catholic

reading circles. One session on primary source materials, which centered

around Maynard Brichford's careful analysis of the records of the American

Library Association Archives at the University of Illinois, served to remind us all of the necessity for research into original documents. Another in formal session on

reading patterns evident in research on library circula

tion records in Montreal turned up possibilities to fuse library and book

history.

Two papers on Chinese library history, one focusing

on the practice of

ancient Chinese library science, the other on Chinese library history re

search since 1949, gave us just a sample of that vast area of library history about which we now know so little. We also heard two fine papers on nine

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48 L&C/Some Paths to Library History Seminar IX

teenth-century American social libraries, one in Cincinnati, Ohio, the

other in New Harmony, Indiana. Examinations of libraries and scholarly communications under National Socialism demonstrated the strong in

fluence that state authority exerted on scholarly reading and public libraries

during the 1930s. Finally, we sampled cliometrics in two papers using sta tistics as a research base: one identified libraries in the Midwest and West before 1876, the other reviewed statistics-gathering by American libraries over the past two centuries.

Our scholarly table here in Bloomington has certainly been full, and the research cuisine served us varied and rich. We have obviously extended

the boundaries of our purview beyond Whig history; for its diversity Library History Seminar VIII indeed deserves high marks. Certainly we have much more to do, vast new areas to scrutinize, untold secrets about our

past still to uncover. Certainly we also need to renew our commitment to

scholarly excellence, to be ready to point out to our colleagues where efforts

fall short, and to praise where they do not. Although we leave Indiana

University today with our appetites perhaps temporarily sated, we also rec

ognize that our hunger for more will surely return. That fact alone

guarantees that Library History Seminar IX will take place, and we hope to see all of you there five years from now to sample more of what you had

here.

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