Before the Public Library

434 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Before the Public Library explores the emergence of community-based lending libraries in the Atlantic World before the advent of the Public Library movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Essays by eighteen scholars from a range of disciplines seek to place, for the first time, community libraries within an Atlantic context over a two-century period. Taking a comparative approach, this volume shows that community libraries played an important - and largely unrecognized - role in shaping Atlantic social networks, political and religious movements, scientific and geographic knowledge, and economic enterprise. Libraries had a distinct role to play in shaping modern identities through the acquisition and circulation of specific kinds of texts, the fostering of sociability, and the building of community-based institutions.

• Reihe: Brill
• ISBN: 9789004348660
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 05.12.2017
• Größe: 234 x 155 mm
• Verlag: Koninklijke Brill BV
• Herausgegeben von: Mark Towsey