This is a study of four small-town midwestern libraries during what were, outside the northeast, the formative years for public library service. The four libraries are Bryant Library, Sauk Centre, Minnesota; Sage Library, Osage, Iowa; Charles H. Moore Library, Lexington, Michigan; and Rhinelander Public Library, Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Wiegand studies the formation, growth, and development of these libraries, and how they interacted with the communities they served, the wider culture, and the culture of professional librarianship. He notes in his introduction that the USA has more public libraries than it does McDonald's restaurants--a statistic that will surprise some readers. Libraries are a basic, vital service for Americans, strongly cherished and supported. The question is, what exactly are the services valued by library users and the community in small-town America?

The ideology of professional librarianship places the value of public libraries in their role as part of the basic machinery of democracy, enabling members of the public to inform and educate themselves, and create and preserve their ability to participate meaningfully in a democratic society. While these four libraries surely filled that role--more so, I think, than Wiegand is willing to admit--what his study reveals is the degree to which a different role was more highly valued by the individual libraries and the communities they served: as mediators and harmonizers of community literary and social values, as well as sources of the popular reading the library profession often regarded as competing with the "real purpose" of libraries, and as public space.

From Sauk Centre, proud of its literary native son Sinclair Lewis and reaching out early on to the local and county school systems to expand services and readership, to Lexington, which did not hire a professional librarian and catalog its collection until 1970, after the time period of this study, the libraries and the communities they served varied widely. What they had in common were social and community leaders who brought with them from New England the familiarity with and desire for public libraries. In all four communities, the local business and professional men, and their wives and daughters through their women's clubs, formed associations, raised money, and created first social libraries and then public libraries. The boards of these public libraries were sometimes dominated by women, sometimes by men, but it was as rare to find a man on a library board who was not married to a prominent and active member of the local women's club, as to find a woman there who was not married to or the daughter of a prominent businessman or local professional.

Wiegand studied this libraries by, along with other primary materials, entering the entire acquisitions records for these four libraries, 1976-1956, into a database to be analyzed, reading the libraries' annual reports, and studying the newspapers and other public information for these libraries. One of the patterns that emerges is that although the organs of professional librarianship inveighed against "popular fiction," and tried to promote good reading, and the librarians in the four communities agreed at least about promoting "good reading," they did not meekly accept the ALA's or their state library association's judgment on what that was. They stocked the "good" books, but they also stocked the popular fiction in high demand among their readers, without the awful social consequences predicted. Wiegand makes the valuable point that how the reader uses the book matters, and that for many in an immigrant nation and a democratic society, reading popular fiction played an important role in assimilating social values, behaviors, and standards. (For more on how the value of a book is determined by how the reader uses it more than by "objective" standards, see C. S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism.)

This is an interesting book packed with new information and insights on the development of public library service in America.

Recommended.

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I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

The author provides a look into four rural libraries in the mid-west. He begins with a brief history of each and then discusses the libraries collections. I thought the book moved a bit slowly. The author spends time listing every board member and their details. I understand that this is an homage to these people, but it became very tedious after a while. Overall, I thought the book was a bit dry. It isn't something I would reread. ( )

In an age where libraries are becoming more and more technical, where cybrarians are the new normal, and library services include everything from toddler’s story time to teenage game rooms to technical courses for the elderly but savvy user, it’s nice to look back at the beginnings of the institution. While libraries in America have been around since the Library Company of Philadelphia formed in 1731, patrons never really get a sense of the history of the building. Wayne Wiegand’s Main Street Public Library tries to wind back the clock and chronicle the beginnings of four typical libraries in America’s Midwest.

The book profiles four libraries: The Bryant Library in Sauk Centre, Minnesota; The Sage Library of Osage, Iowa; The Charles H. Moore Library in Lexington, Michigan; and The Rhinelander Public Library in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. These libraries share many similarities. They each started as a closed collection of books available for local shareholders in the company. When they went public, the hours were limited to a few hours each Saturday. Each library’s collection was bolstered by donations from the public, and those drives regularly brought in hundreds of volumes.

They also constantly struggled with ensuring that residents are reading “good” literature (apparently the scourge of Horatio Alger and Oliver Optic paperbacks was warping the minds of youngsters everywhere). Each was started with governance by the town’s elite, but then quickly bent to the will of the librarians (first) and the users (later). Also, there were an awful lot of Masons involved in the library councils, although that’s to be expected as both the Masons and libraries seek to increase the public good.

On the other hand, each library had their unique flair. The Bryant Library became a model for how well a small town library could perform as long as the librarian was properly trained. The Sage Branch quickly became enmeshed in the town political squabbles, leading to the rapid turnover of head librarians. The Moore location was in a prime spot to attract a lot of tourist subscriptions, which accounted for the bulk of its circulation numbers. The Rhinelander location had to contend with immigrant tensions and union workers while building their library.

On the book as a whole, there are just two issues. The first is the amount of statistics laced throughout the text constantly comparing library subscriptions, holdings, and per capita lending amounts to the ALA standards. All that data gets in the way of the story of the places. The second is that each chapter ends rather abruptly. You get into the swing of each library’s history, and then all of a sudden, 1956 rolls around and the author has nothing more to say. Also, the writing’s a bit off. It’s not bad writing; it’s just not good writing, either. It reads more like a really long journal article than a book.

On the positive side, you get a real sense of small town library metamorphosis from the antebellum years to the mid 1950s. Also of interest is a decent analysis of each library holdings, how they compared to each other, and which books caused reactions in each branch’s community. Wiegand tracks how certain acquisitions (or conspicuous non-acquisitions) were informed by the political, cultural, and social atmosphere of the nation and the community at large. I’m getting a little long-winded here, but this was a decent and very informative book. If you are in any way connected with a public library, this is a good book for you. ( )

I enjoyed this little tome. Author Wayne Wiegand spotlights four libraries in the rural mid-west, giving a brief history of each, from about the 1870s through the 1950s. He then discusses the books which did or did not make it into the collections of these libraries.

The first section of the book can get a bit tedious at times, as it lists by name every founding board member and their political and religious affiliation. In addition, each and every librarian is discussed. However, in the later sections of the book, this information does become relevant as the driving forces behind collection choices are discussed. Despite the rather dry subject litany, Mr. Wiegand portrays a marvelous picture of how libraries were founded and run in rural America in the late 19th and early 20th century, and in the end I enjoyed the section more often than not.

The role of the library as a place within the communities of rural America is also given a fair amount of ink. Interestingly enough, many activities which still take place today in my local library system had their roots in these first fledgling, small town libraries.

Collection building is given an interesting perusal. Wayne Wiegand built a data base to cross reference the collections of the four libraries he profiles, plus one additional library of the era. He then gives a prose comparison of all the libraries and compares their collections with publications such as Booklist, which were put out by national and state library organizations, to see how the libraries followed the collection building trends recommended by their professional organizations.

I would have happily read twice the given information pertaining to how each of the libraries dealt with the major social issues of their era. This period in American history saw many pivotal issues, such as the rise of labor unions and socialism, women’s suffrage, and prohibition. The efforts of various national and local groups to suppress certain specific works of literature and the ongoing battle against fiction in favor of non-fiction is discussed in interesting detail, with special emphasis given to how each of the profiled libraries handled the issues. This section was definitely the strongest of the book.

There were may titles which I discovered for the first time as I learned about library holdings of this era and which I look forward to reading. In addition, the book sparked a desire to learn more about Andrew Carnegie, who provided funding to erect the buildings in which three of the profiled libraries were housed. At about 250 pages, this book is a quick look at a seldom discussed element of American history, which I, as a bibliophile and lover of small, local libraries, found well worth my while. ( )

Wiegand provides histories of four upper midwestern libraries and then devotes a chapter to analyzing the catalogs of these libraries up to about 1970. The libraries studied are The Bryant Library in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, The Sage Library of Osage, Iowa, The Charles H. Moore Library of Lexington, Michigan, and the Rhinelander Public Library in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. The study is interesting as it shows the development of these small town libraries through the ages. Today's libraries scorn censorship, but it was not a problem for most of these libraries in their early days. They scorned some of the dime novels of the day. Book selection was usually made by committee in the early days and later became a responsibility of the librarian. One thing that really surprised me were the late hours many of the libraries kept. Libraries often did not open until mid-afternoon and were open until as late as 10 p.m., closing during the supper hour. The bibliography is fairly extensive, providing an excellent starting point for those interested in further research. Wiegand has done a good job researching the literary history of these communities. My only criticism is that the text becomes mired down with details that make for tedious reading in places. This book, however, is intended for a more scholarly audience, and persons interested in these communities as well as persons interested in literary or library history will find it fascinating. This review is based on a advanced readers galley received through NetGalley for review. ( )