Mentor: Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, Ph.D.

The next time you are driving through your neighborhood, take a look at your local branch of the public library. Many of us don’t think about the history of these national institutions, even though they are local fixtures in our communities. A newspaper article from the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1874 introduces a sort of chicken and egg question regarding the establishment of public libraries in the United States: “The laws of books seem to reverse the laws of trade, since a supply was found necessary in order to create a demand.” As someone who has loved books my whole life, I found this quote really thought-provoking and it speaks to my research question: Why did the public library movement emerge in the United States and how was it explained or justified? How has the role of the public library changed over time?

In order to explore this topic in more concrete terms, I am doing two specific case studies: the Boston Public Library (BPL) and the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library (CPL). The BPL is the oldest large municipal public library in the US, making it a prime and well-documented example of the early public library movement. The CPL is a well-established and well-respected public library system right in my hometown of Cincinnati. There are three different lenses I am looking through to answer my research question: public opinion as expressed in newspapers, the journals or speeches of early library founders (when accessible), and finally the libraries themselves as they identified their own missions and goals.

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