Recently a paper on IPLO was published by Greg Linnell in the Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science : The Institute of Professional Librarians of Ontario; On the History and Historiography of a Professional Association. Greg is interested in library history and is currently at the Library Services Centre in Kitchener, ON.
Greg Linnell's descriptive analysis of the histories of the Institute of Professional Librarians of Ontario (1960–1976) reveals not only the circumstances surrounding the creation, growth, and decline of this singular expression of the professionalization of librarianship but also foregrounds the ways in which the historical narration of the profession must look beyond the traditional delineation of intrinsic traits in order to circumscribe librarianship more adequately. To that end, consideration is given to one important factor, the Royal Commission Inquiry into Civil Rights (1964–71). It is evident that historical recovery of this sort is crucial to the profession’s self-understanding as it negotiates its contemporary stance with respect to both librarians and the publics that they serve.
Greg has agreed to let me post this here, so please take time to read about. IPLO was an important Association, esp. in the 1960s, that expressed many librarians' views about professionalism in Ontario and their efforts to create a professional organization that could speak for librarians in all types of libraries.
To download Greg's article just go to : IPLO
If you have information IPLO that you would like to share, just point to the comment and let us know about your ideas.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY'S ONTARIO LIBRARY CONNECTIONS
There are many enthusiastic Lucy Maud fans and scholars across the world, and the recent University of Guelph library's Montgomery conference held last weekend (Oct. 24 - 27) was a great success.
What many people do not know about are the library connections with Montgomery here in Ontario. After she moved to Swansea (now Toronto) in 1935, she became a library trustee on the local library committee, the Swansea Memorial Free Public Library that had been formed after WWI. Unfortunately, this coincided to some extent with Montgomery's later years that often saw her slip into a depressed state for some time (e.g., she really did not make many entries in her famous journal after the start of WWII). She did not write about libraries .... unfortunately for us. As a trustee, Montgomery would have been responsible for attending regular meetings, looking at finances, approving book purchases, etc. in the small Swansea operation.
But there is another connection as well. In 1929, Montgomery was asked to publish a short autobiography in the old Ontario Library Review that ran from 1916-1982. This was part of a series of articles by "famous" Canadian authors, and of course Montgomery easily qualified on that score. It makes for interesting reading, especially her stated love for poetry, her recollection about her father, and her obvious interest in her own book collection.
As this article in OLR (published by the Ontario Dept. of Education) is sometimes difficult to get a hold of, I am reprinting it here in this post as follows:
_____________________
An Autobiographical Sketch
By L.M. Montgomery
I wish it were permissible to write fiction about oneself when asked for “an autobiographical sketch.” I get so tired of writing the same old facts over and over. As Anne herself said, I could imagine a heap of things about myself far more interesting than what I know! Any one of the “dream lives” I have lived by the score would be really thrilling.
I was born – praise to the gods! – in Prince Edward Island – the colourful little land of ruby and emerald sapphire. I come of Scottish ancestry, with a dash of English and Irish from several “grands” and “greats” and a French origin back in the mists of antiquity. The Montgomery’s emigrated from France in wake of the French Princess who married a Scottish King. But they became so Scotchified eventually that they even had a tartan of their own.
My mother died when I was a baby and I was brought up by my grandparents in the old Macneill homestead at Cavendish – eleven miles from a railway and twenty–four from a town, but only half a mile from one of the finest sea-beaches in the world – the old North Shore.
I went to the “district school” there from six to sixteen. Out of school I lived a simple wholesome happy life on the old farm, ranging through fields and woods, climbing over the rocky “capes” at the shore, picking berries in the “barrens” and apples in big orchards. I am especially thankful my childhood was spent in a spot where there were many trees – trees with personalities of their own, planted and tended by hands long dead, bound up with everything of joy and sorrow that visited my life. The old King orchard in my books, “The Story Girl,” and “The Golden Road,” was drawn from life.
My little existence was very simple and quiet. But it never held a dull moment for me. I had in my imagination a passport to fairyland. In a twinkling I could whisk myself into regions of wonderful adventure, unhampered by any restrictions of reality.
For anything I know I might have been born reading and writing. I have no recollection of learning to do either. I devoured every book I could lay my hands on and new most of “Paradise Lost” and “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by heart when I was eight. Novels were taboo, but fortunately there was no ban on poetry. I could revel it will in “the music of the immortals” – Tennyson, Byron, Scott, Milton, Burns. And one wonderful day when I was nine years old I discovered that I could write “poetry” myself!
It was called “Autumn,” and I wrote it on the back of an old post-office, “letter bill” – for writing paper was not too plentiful in that old farmhouse, where nothing was ever written save an occasional letter. I read it aloud to father. Father said it didn’t sound much like poetry. “It’s blank verse,” I cried. “Very blank,” said father.
I determined that my next poem should rhyme. And I wrote yards of verses about flowers and months and trees and stars and sunsets and addressed “Lines” to my friends. When I was thirteen I began sending verses to the Island weekly paper – and never heard either of or from them. Perhaps this is because I did not send any return stamps – being then in blissful ignorance of such a requirement.
Before this, however, when I was eleven years old, I had begun writing stories. I had a boxful of them – many tragic creations in which nearly everybody died. The “happy ending” was a thing unknown to me then. In those tales, “battle, murder and sudden death” were the order of the day.
When I was fifteen I had my first ride on a railway train, and it was a long one. I went out to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and spent a year with father who was living there. During that winter I sent a “poem,” written around one of the dramatic legends of the old North Shore, down to Charlottetown Patriot – and the Patriot printed it –thereby giving me the greatest moment of my life!
Being now, as I thought, fairly launched on a career, I kept sending verses to various papers and began to plume myself on being quite the literary person. I returned to Prince Edward Island the next summer, attended school for another year, then went to Prince of Wales College, Charlottetown, to qualify for a teacher’s licence. After that I taught a year. During these years I was writing all sorts of stuff, mainly verses and short stories, but had never succeeded in getting into any periodical that paid anything. All the stuff I sent to other magazines came promptly back. I used to feel woefully discouraged at times over those icy rejection slips. But I kept on. Whatever gifts the gods had denied me they had at least dowered me with stick-to-it-iveness!
After teaching a year I went to Halifax and spent a winter taking a selected course in English literature at Dalhousie College. One day in that winter I got a letter from the editor of an American juvenile magazine accepting a short story I had sent him and enclosing a check for five whole dollars. Never in all my life have I felt so rich as I did then! Did I spend it for needed boots and gloves? I did not. I wanted to get something I could keep forever in memory of having “arrived.” I hied me down town and purchased leather-bound dollar editions of Milton, Byron, Wordsworth, Longfellow, and Tennyson. I have repented me of many things rashly bought in my life, but never of those. I have them yet – dingy and shabby now – but with the springs of eternal life still bubbling freshly in them. Not that I do not love many modern poets. I do. But the old magic was good and remains good.
I taught two more years. Then grandfather died and I went home to stay with grandmother. She and I lived there alone together in the old farmhouse for thirteen years, with the exception of one winter which I spent in Halifax working as proof-reader and general handy-man on the staff of the Daily Echo. In those years I wrote literally thousands of poems and stories – most of the latter being juveniles for the United States periodicals, the Canadian magazine market at that time being practically non-existent.
I had always hoped to write a book – but I never seemed able to make a beginning. I have always hated beginning a story. When I get the first paragraph written I always feel as if it were half done. To begin a book seemed quite a stupendous task. Besides, I did not see how I could get time from my regular writing hours. In the end I never deliberately set out to write a book. It just “happened.”
In the spring of 1904 I was looking over my note book of plots for an idea for a short serial I had been asked to write for a certain Sunday School paper. I found a faded entry, written many years before, “Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for boy. By mistake girl is sent them.” I thought this would do. I began to “block out” the chapters, devise incidents, and “brood up” my heroine. Anne began to expand in such a fashion that she soon seemed very real to me. I thought it rather a shame to waste her on an ephemeral seven-chapter serial. Then the thought came, “Make a book of it. You have the central idea and the heroine. All you need do is to spread it over enough chapters to amount a book.”
The result was “Anne of Green Gables.” I wrote it in the evenings after my regular day’s work was done. The next thing was to find a publisher. I typed it myself on my old second-hand typewriter that never made the capitals plain and wouldn’t print “w” at all. Then I began sending it out – and kept on, because the publishers did not jump at it. It came back to me five times. The sixth time it was accepted. “Anne of Green Gables” was published in 1908. I did not dream it would be the success it has been. I thought girls in their teens might like it but that was the only audience I hoped to reach. Yet men and women who are grandparents, boys at school and college, statesmen at the helm of empires, soldiers in the trenches, old pioneers in the Australian bush, missionaries in China, monks in remote monasteries, Mohammedans in Java and red-headed girls all over the world have written to me of the delight they found in Anne.
With the publication of Green Gables a long struggle was over. Since then I have published thirteen novels and a volume of poems. Poetry was my first love and I have always regretted being false to it. But one must live.
Seventeen years ago I married a Presbyterian minister and came to Ontario to live. I like Ontario muchly but anyone who had once loved “the only Island there is” never really loves any other place. And so the scene of all my books, except the “Blue Castle” has been laid there.
The “Blue Castle” is in Muskoka. Muskoka is the only place I’ve ever been in that could be my Island’s rival in my heart. So I wanted to write a story about it.
My new book, “Magic for Marigold,” will be out next summer. I’ve gone back to “The Island” in it. For there the fairies still abide despite the raucous shrieks of motor cars. There are still a few spots where one who knows may find them.
Ontario Library Review, February 1929
What many people do not know about are the library connections with Montgomery here in Ontario. After she moved to Swansea (now Toronto) in 1935, she became a library trustee on the local library committee, the Swansea Memorial Free Public Library that had been formed after WWI. Unfortunately, this coincided to some extent with Montgomery's later years that often saw her slip into a depressed state for some time (e.g., she really did not make many entries in her famous journal after the start of WWII). She did not write about libraries .... unfortunately for us. As a trustee, Montgomery would have been responsible for attending regular meetings, looking at finances, approving book purchases, etc. in the small Swansea operation.
But there is another connection as well. In 1929, Montgomery was asked to publish a short autobiography in the old Ontario Library Review that ran from 1916-1982. This was part of a series of articles by "famous" Canadian authors, and of course Montgomery easily qualified on that score. It makes for interesting reading, especially her stated love for poetry, her recollection about her father, and her obvious interest in her own book collection.
As this article in OLR (published by the Ontario Dept. of Education) is sometimes difficult to get a hold of, I am reprinting it here in this post as follows:
_____________________
An Autobiographical Sketch
By L.M. Montgomery
I wish it were permissible to write fiction about oneself when asked for “an autobiographical sketch.” I get so tired of writing the same old facts over and over. As Anne herself said, I could imagine a heap of things about myself far more interesting than what I know! Any one of the “dream lives” I have lived by the score would be really thrilling.
I was born – praise to the gods! – in Prince Edward Island – the colourful little land of ruby and emerald sapphire. I come of Scottish ancestry, with a dash of English and Irish from several “grands” and “greats” and a French origin back in the mists of antiquity. The Montgomery’s emigrated from France in wake of the French Princess who married a Scottish King. But they became so Scotchified eventually that they even had a tartan of their own.
My mother died when I was a baby and I was brought up by my grandparents in the old Macneill homestead at Cavendish – eleven miles from a railway and twenty–four from a town, but only half a mile from one of the finest sea-beaches in the world – the old North Shore.
I went to the “district school” there from six to sixteen. Out of school I lived a simple wholesome happy life on the old farm, ranging through fields and woods, climbing over the rocky “capes” at the shore, picking berries in the “barrens” and apples in big orchards. I am especially thankful my childhood was spent in a spot where there were many trees – trees with personalities of their own, planted and tended by hands long dead, bound up with everything of joy and sorrow that visited my life. The old King orchard in my books, “The Story Girl,” and “The Golden Road,” was drawn from life.
My little existence was very simple and quiet. But it never held a dull moment for me. I had in my imagination a passport to fairyland. In a twinkling I could whisk myself into regions of wonderful adventure, unhampered by any restrictions of reality.
For anything I know I might have been born reading and writing. I have no recollection of learning to do either. I devoured every book I could lay my hands on and new most of “Paradise Lost” and “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by heart when I was eight. Novels were taboo, but fortunately there was no ban on poetry. I could revel it will in “the music of the immortals” – Tennyson, Byron, Scott, Milton, Burns. And one wonderful day when I was nine years old I discovered that I could write “poetry” myself!
It was called “Autumn,” and I wrote it on the back of an old post-office, “letter bill” – for writing paper was not too plentiful in that old farmhouse, where nothing was ever written save an occasional letter. I read it aloud to father. Father said it didn’t sound much like poetry. “It’s blank verse,” I cried. “Very blank,” said father.
I determined that my next poem should rhyme. And I wrote yards of verses about flowers and months and trees and stars and sunsets and addressed “Lines” to my friends. When I was thirteen I began sending verses to the Island weekly paper – and never heard either of or from them. Perhaps this is because I did not send any return stamps – being then in blissful ignorance of such a requirement.
Before this, however, when I was eleven years old, I had begun writing stories. I had a boxful of them – many tragic creations in which nearly everybody died. The “happy ending” was a thing unknown to me then. In those tales, “battle, murder and sudden death” were the order of the day.
When I was fifteen I had my first ride on a railway train, and it was a long one. I went out to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and spent a year with father who was living there. During that winter I sent a “poem,” written around one of the dramatic legends of the old North Shore, down to Charlottetown Patriot – and the Patriot printed it –thereby giving me the greatest moment of my life!
Being now, as I thought, fairly launched on a career, I kept sending verses to various papers and began to plume myself on being quite the literary person. I returned to Prince Edward Island the next summer, attended school for another year, then went to Prince of Wales College, Charlottetown, to qualify for a teacher’s licence. After that I taught a year. During these years I was writing all sorts of stuff, mainly verses and short stories, but had never succeeded in getting into any periodical that paid anything. All the stuff I sent to other magazines came promptly back. I used to feel woefully discouraged at times over those icy rejection slips. But I kept on. Whatever gifts the gods had denied me they had at least dowered me with stick-to-it-iveness!
After teaching a year I went to Halifax and spent a winter taking a selected course in English literature at Dalhousie College. One day in that winter I got a letter from the editor of an American juvenile magazine accepting a short story I had sent him and enclosing a check for five whole dollars. Never in all my life have I felt so rich as I did then! Did I spend it for needed boots and gloves? I did not. I wanted to get something I could keep forever in memory of having “arrived.” I hied me down town and purchased leather-bound dollar editions of Milton, Byron, Wordsworth, Longfellow, and Tennyson. I have repented me of many things rashly bought in my life, but never of those. I have them yet – dingy and shabby now – but with the springs of eternal life still bubbling freshly in them. Not that I do not love many modern poets. I do. But the old magic was good and remains good.
I taught two more years. Then grandfather died and I went home to stay with grandmother. She and I lived there alone together in the old farmhouse for thirteen years, with the exception of one winter which I spent in Halifax working as proof-reader and general handy-man on the staff of the Daily Echo. In those years I wrote literally thousands of poems and stories – most of the latter being juveniles for the United States periodicals, the Canadian magazine market at that time being practically non-existent.
I had always hoped to write a book – but I never seemed able to make a beginning. I have always hated beginning a story. When I get the first paragraph written I always feel as if it were half done. To begin a book seemed quite a stupendous task. Besides, I did not see how I could get time from my regular writing hours. In the end I never deliberately set out to write a book. It just “happened.”
In the spring of 1904 I was looking over my note book of plots for an idea for a short serial I had been asked to write for a certain Sunday School paper. I found a faded entry, written many years before, “Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for boy. By mistake girl is sent them.” I thought this would do. I began to “block out” the chapters, devise incidents, and “brood up” my heroine. Anne began to expand in such a fashion that she soon seemed very real to me. I thought it rather a shame to waste her on an ephemeral seven-chapter serial. Then the thought came, “Make a book of it. You have the central idea and the heroine. All you need do is to spread it over enough chapters to amount a book.”
The result was “Anne of Green Gables.” I wrote it in the evenings after my regular day’s work was done. The next thing was to find a publisher. I typed it myself on my old second-hand typewriter that never made the capitals plain and wouldn’t print “w” at all. Then I began sending it out – and kept on, because the publishers did not jump at it. It came back to me five times. The sixth time it was accepted. “Anne of Green Gables” was published in 1908. I did not dream it would be the success it has been. I thought girls in their teens might like it but that was the only audience I hoped to reach. Yet men and women who are grandparents, boys at school and college, statesmen at the helm of empires, soldiers in the trenches, old pioneers in the Australian bush, missionaries in China, monks in remote monasteries, Mohammedans in Java and red-headed girls all over the world have written to me of the delight they found in Anne.
With the publication of Green Gables a long struggle was over. Since then I have published thirteen novels and a volume of poems. Poetry was my first love and I have always regretted being false to it. But one must live.
Seventeen years ago I married a Presbyterian minister and came to Ontario to live. I like Ontario muchly but anyone who had once loved “the only Island there is” never really loves any other place. And so the scene of all my books, except the “Blue Castle” has been laid there.
The “Blue Castle” is in Muskoka. Muskoka is the only place I’ve ever been in that could be my Island’s rival in my heart. So I wanted to write a story about it.
My new book, “Magic for Marigold,” will be out next summer. I’ve gone back to “The Island” in it. For there the fairies still abide despite the raucous shrieks of motor cars. There are still a few spots where one who knows may find them.
Ontario Library Review, February 1929
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
THE “POLITICS” OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES AGAIN
Earlier this year, I posted an article by A.S. Popowich, “The Politics of Public Library History,” Dalhousie Journal of Information and Management, v. 3, no. 1 (Winter 2007), to Libraries Today website. The author discusses a number of interesting theories about the early development of public libraries and their fundamental societal mission and value. Web 2.0 is mentioned too, for after all, perhaps ideas circulating in the virtual world could be related to those in print culture.
There are a few points I would like to investigate, but first a couple of corrections. The article ranges “far and wide” on the critical theory side and might attract or repel library historians of various persuasions on this score. But what got my attention were two points where the author misconstrues things.
First, in summarizing Robert V. Williams’ 1981 article in the Journal of Library History 16 (2) 1981, 327-36 on “The Public Library as Dependent Variable” (JLH is now re-titled Libraries & the Cultural Record), Popowich highlights three variables that are often discussed in the library literature devoted to the rise of public libraries in the 19th century: the social conditions theory, the democratic traditions theory, and the social control theory. All of these are covered and debated in our historical accounts of early library development. But, the fourth variable Williams identified, people – “Libraries and Librarians” – gets no mention. Strangely, Popowich, who leans to the political left, ignores the idea that people and groups have the power to create and change institutional arrangements. In this case, the well documented “public library movement” of the 19th c. played much the same role as did English workers in E.P. Thompson’s classic work Making of the English Working Class (1963) – here, we find the vital agency of individuals at work – people creating their own class consciousness as they interact with other classes/groups – during a historical period. Thompson, a notable leftist, actually decried the traditional, rigid concept of structure underlying class and influenced a generation of social historians to use Marxist ideas and theories more freely in their research. Thompson's lasting legacy is that people do "make their history."
Why is this fourth (missing) variable so important for Canadian libraries? In Ontario, the public library movement was actively involved in promoting and creating libraries across the province for a period of three-quarters of a century after 1850: it’s a reminder that people can be fundamental “makers of history” and that structural models (e.g., “democratic tradition”), various societal factors, and theories such as social control are not necessarily the primary historical factors in library history. In fact, I think that social control is not particularly effective as an explanatory tool in historical work due to various limitations in definition and inappropriate use. When it comes to the politics of public libraries in 19th c. Canada, from my standpoint, it was a matter of farmers, businessmen, women, tradesmen, local politicians, educators, ministers, etc. trying to establish provincial legislation, local political administration, and promotion of services to unserved municipalities that proved to be the central focus for creating a public entity known as the free public library and for describing it historically.
Second, the author (perhaps accidentally) misquotes what I wrote a decade ago in my review of Alistair Black’s 1996 New History of the English Public Library. In writing about Black’s application of Idealism to the development of English libraries at the turn of the 20th c. in his cultural history, I mentioned that this was a weaker section than his chapters on the Utilitarian model he used for the 19th c. I wrote that applying Black’s Utilitarian-Idealist model to public libraries in Canada would “be quite a challenge:” I did not state that it “might not be difficult” as the Popowich indicates; and his citation should be to page 31 of my article in Epilogue (1996), not page 80 as it appears in this online version. Further, Popowich interprets my position on the societal influence of Idealism (e.g., equality of opportunity or state action) to be one that would concentrate on the library as a liberal, democratic, or capitalist institution and that in so doing I would ignore power relationships or other political alternatives to the “liberal-capitalist” state that emerged in Canada after 1850. My longer comments about state activism and the changing nature of liberal thought in the context of social history (unlike cultural history) were not referenced, and it appeared my approach would be an uncritical one.
Quite the contrary, it is not my intention to meander in a blinkered fashion across the Canadian historical landscape occupied by libraries! It is entirely possible to theorize and write about libraries in a historical “liberal setting" and demonstrate why liberal values and ideas were dominant without ignoring other history-as-account theories or history-as-event political options. Ian MacKay’s fascinating “The liberal order framework: a prospectus for a reconnaissance of Canadian history,” Canadian Historical Review v. 81 (Dec. 2000) pp. 641ff proposes the model of liberalism as an overarching political structure to help explain change in Canadian life generally. It could also be used in the case of public libraries because recent research has shown that liberal ideas at the local level of government where libraries were created and maintained in various forms are very useful in accounting for the development of an institution that values reading and the dissemination of information. Of course, the influence of liberalism fluctuated over time and was often contradictory – on the face of things, liberalism valued dissent, but public discourse/debates often meant that minority opinions or contrarian ideas were suppressed.
Also, for a thought provoking, postmodern view of liberalism and public libraries in England, Patrick Joyce’s Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, Verso, 2003) pp. 128-137 is a must. Joyce applies Michael Foucault’s idea of “governmentality” – intellectually organized ways (e.g., ideas or techniques) by which people are regulated and governed – to public libraries in Victorian Britain (actually, Joyce published an article with the same content previously in 1999 as “The Politics of the Liberal Archive,” History of the Human Sciences, v. 12, no. 2, 1999, pp. 35-49). Unlike Alistair Black, who prefers to employ Foucault’s “power/knowledge” theory to library development, Joyce explores the “governmental-liberal” aspects of social space, bibliographic control, and public discourse regarding the value of libraries and touches on different historical ideas. I think these examples, which appeared after I wrote my review of Black's New History in 1996, indicate lines of historical narrative and explanation that I could pursue profitably, if I wanted, without being “tunnelistic” or uncritical. Awareness of different models, theories, interpretations, and publications in library history is crucial, and I can’t understand, for example, why Joyce’s work hasn’t drawn any attention in the library literature to date.
Having said all this, I liked the ideas in Popowich’s article – where have our Marxist-leaning library historians been all these years? It is not such a bad stance; Marx has had an incredible influence on the writing of history for more than a century-and-a-half. And I must admit, I prefer a dash of Habermas rather than Foucault on my library history plate.
There are a few points I would like to investigate, but first a couple of corrections. The article ranges “far and wide” on the critical theory side and might attract or repel library historians of various persuasions on this score. But what got my attention were two points where the author misconstrues things.
First, in summarizing Robert V. Williams’ 1981 article in the Journal of Library History 16 (2) 1981, 327-36 on “The Public Library as Dependent Variable” (JLH is now re-titled Libraries & the Cultural Record), Popowich highlights three variables that are often discussed in the library literature devoted to the rise of public libraries in the 19th century: the social conditions theory, the democratic traditions theory, and the social control theory. All of these are covered and debated in our historical accounts of early library development. But, the fourth variable Williams identified, people – “Libraries and Librarians” – gets no mention. Strangely, Popowich, who leans to the political left, ignores the idea that people and groups have the power to create and change institutional arrangements. In this case, the well documented “public library movement” of the 19th c. played much the same role as did English workers in E.P. Thompson’s classic work Making of the English Working Class (1963) – here, we find the vital agency of individuals at work – people creating their own class consciousness as they interact with other classes/groups – during a historical period. Thompson, a notable leftist, actually decried the traditional, rigid concept of structure underlying class and influenced a generation of social historians to use Marxist ideas and theories more freely in their research. Thompson's lasting legacy is that people do "make their history."
Why is this fourth (missing) variable so important for Canadian libraries? In Ontario, the public library movement was actively involved in promoting and creating libraries across the province for a period of three-quarters of a century after 1850: it’s a reminder that people can be fundamental “makers of history” and that structural models (e.g., “democratic tradition”), various societal factors, and theories such as social control are not necessarily the primary historical factors in library history. In fact, I think that social control is not particularly effective as an explanatory tool in historical work due to various limitations in definition and inappropriate use. When it comes to the politics of public libraries in 19th c. Canada, from my standpoint, it was a matter of farmers, businessmen, women, tradesmen, local politicians, educators, ministers, etc. trying to establish provincial legislation, local political administration, and promotion of services to unserved municipalities that proved to be the central focus for creating a public entity known as the free public library and for describing it historically.
Second, the author (perhaps accidentally) misquotes what I wrote a decade ago in my review of Alistair Black’s 1996 New History of the English Public Library. In writing about Black’s application of Idealism to the development of English libraries at the turn of the 20th c. in his cultural history, I mentioned that this was a weaker section than his chapters on the Utilitarian model he used for the 19th c. I wrote that applying Black’s Utilitarian-Idealist model to public libraries in Canada would “be quite a challenge:” I did not state that it “might not be difficult” as the Popowich indicates; and his citation should be to page 31 of my article in Epilogue (1996), not page 80 as it appears in this online version. Further, Popowich interprets my position on the societal influence of Idealism (e.g., equality of opportunity or state action) to be one that would concentrate on the library as a liberal, democratic, or capitalist institution and that in so doing I would ignore power relationships or other political alternatives to the “liberal-capitalist” state that emerged in Canada after 1850. My longer comments about state activism and the changing nature of liberal thought in the context of social history (unlike cultural history) were not referenced, and it appeared my approach would be an uncritical one.
Quite the contrary, it is not my intention to meander in a blinkered fashion across the Canadian historical landscape occupied by libraries! It is entirely possible to theorize and write about libraries in a historical “liberal setting" and demonstrate why liberal values and ideas were dominant without ignoring other history-as-account theories or history-as-event political options. Ian MacKay’s fascinating “The liberal order framework: a prospectus for a reconnaissance of Canadian history,” Canadian Historical Review v. 81 (Dec. 2000) pp. 641ff proposes the model of liberalism as an overarching political structure to help explain change in Canadian life generally. It could also be used in the case of public libraries because recent research has shown that liberal ideas at the local level of government where libraries were created and maintained in various forms are very useful in accounting for the development of an institution that values reading and the dissemination of information. Of course, the influence of liberalism fluctuated over time and was often contradictory – on the face of things, liberalism valued dissent, but public discourse/debates often meant that minority opinions or contrarian ideas were suppressed.
Also, for a thought provoking, postmodern view of liberalism and public libraries in England, Patrick Joyce’s Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, Verso, 2003) pp. 128-137 is a must. Joyce applies Michael Foucault’s idea of “governmentality” – intellectually organized ways (e.g., ideas or techniques) by which people are regulated and governed – to public libraries in Victorian Britain (actually, Joyce published an article with the same content previously in 1999 as “The Politics of the Liberal Archive,” History of the Human Sciences, v. 12, no. 2, 1999, pp. 35-49). Unlike Alistair Black, who prefers to employ Foucault’s “power/knowledge” theory to library development, Joyce explores the “governmental-liberal” aspects of social space, bibliographic control, and public discourse regarding the value of libraries and touches on different historical ideas. I think these examples, which appeared after I wrote my review of Black's New History in 1996, indicate lines of historical narrative and explanation that I could pursue profitably, if I wanted, without being “tunnelistic” or uncritical. Awareness of different models, theories, interpretations, and publications in library history is crucial, and I can’t understand, for example, why Joyce’s work hasn’t drawn any attention in the library literature to date.
Having said all this, I liked the ideas in Popowich’s article – where have our Marxist-leaning library historians been all these years? It is not such a bad stance; Marx has had an incredible influence on the writing of history for more than a century-and-a-half. And I must admit, I prefer a dash of Habermas rather than Foucault on my library history plate.
Monday, March 20, 2006
LIBRARIES TODAY
Libraries Today--a blog space for me!
At last: a more convenient way to post information, reviews, and comments about Canadian library history. Maintaining a web site for ten years while standards change from HTML to XHTML or XML, etc. can be very exacting. The development of weblogs or blogs in the past three years has been very impressive -- in fact I was considering changing the old site "Libraries Today" into a blog, but I think best to try both for a while.
Technology may change again -- blogs may go the way to the old BBS services of the late 80s and early 90s. For now, I will try to post ideas, etc. about Canadian library history, or even general library history, via a blog rather than trying to further develop the old Libraries Today further.
Why have a blog on Canadian History? There is a concern with contemporary library political, administrative, economic, and social issues that are relevant to library history. What influence does the study of the "past" have on the "present?" I try to convey that there is a dual function that critical history performs: it helps us understand how past thoughts and actions were shaped and that it provides us with a deeper awareness of present changes. In this context, past events, facts, trends, and changes can be examined using historical methods and critical theories. As well, we can gain a understanding of explanations for causes and consequences, the use of narratives and evidence, and different versions of the past.
We are constantly reinterpreting history (as events and as historical accounts) using new concepts which emerge from uncovering more evidence and rethinking accepted facts in the light of new ideas and research methodology. "History" can be taken to mean what we accept happened in the past (or, conversely, what did not take place); it can also mean what is written as a result of continuous dialogue: what took place (events); why or how things happened (explanations); who was involved (personages); when did events occur (chronological dimension); and how ideas were formed and the influence they had.
There are many areas where research can enlarge our knowledge of the history of libraries. To name a few: biography; public library administration; the impact of international technological innovation; services for children; rural services; the influence of larger urban libraries; legislation; and the professionalization of librarianship. Currently, there is a resurgence of interest about the role of library history in the education of librarians, the interpretation of public library development since 1850, the impact of gender, and the future prospects of library history as a field of study.
Historical understanding helps us to comprehend cause-and-effect relationships and to avoid judging the past (and by extension "today") in terms of current norms and values. By looking at past library events and decisions in Ontario and across Canada we can develop alternative approaches to contemporary conditions based on a better awareness of the likely consequences. Historical memory is one of the keys to self-identity.
At last: a more convenient way to post information, reviews, and comments about Canadian library history. Maintaining a web site for ten years while standards change from HTML to XHTML or XML, etc. can be very exacting. The development of weblogs or blogs in the past three years has been very impressive -- in fact I was considering changing the old site "Libraries Today" into a blog, but I think best to try both for a while.
Technology may change again -- blogs may go the way to the old BBS services of the late 80s and early 90s. For now, I will try to post ideas, etc. about Canadian library history, or even general library history, via a blog rather than trying to further develop the old Libraries Today further.
Why have a blog on Canadian History? There is a concern with contemporary library political, administrative, economic, and social issues that are relevant to library history. What influence does the study of the "past" have on the "present?" I try to convey that there is a dual function that critical history performs: it helps us understand how past thoughts and actions were shaped and that it provides us with a deeper awareness of present changes. In this context, past events, facts, trends, and changes can be examined using historical methods and critical theories. As well, we can gain a understanding of explanations for causes and consequences, the use of narratives and evidence, and different versions of the past.
We are constantly reinterpreting history (as events and as historical accounts) using new concepts which emerge from uncovering more evidence and rethinking accepted facts in the light of new ideas and research methodology. "History" can be taken to mean what we accept happened in the past (or, conversely, what did not take place); it can also mean what is written as a result of continuous dialogue: what took place (events); why or how things happened (explanations); who was involved (personages); when did events occur (chronological dimension); and how ideas were formed and the influence they had.
There are many areas where research can enlarge our knowledge of the history of libraries. To name a few: biography; public library administration; the impact of international technological innovation; services for children; rural services; the influence of larger urban libraries; legislation; and the professionalization of librarianship. Currently, there is a resurgence of interest about the role of library history in the education of librarians, the interpretation of public library development since 1850, the impact of gender, and the future prospects of library history as a field of study.
Historical understanding helps us to comprehend cause-and-effect relationships and to avoid judging the past (and by extension "today") in terms of current norms and values. By looking at past library events and decisions in Ontario and across Canada we can develop alternative approaches to contemporary conditions based on a better awareness of the likely consequences. Historical memory is one of the keys to self-identity.