What makes younger library users, past or present, so interesting to researchers?
At the Library History Seminar XII, September 10–12, many scholarly papers focused on youth services. The ideas in circulation at the Madison conference suggested that two factors ignite academic interest—censorship and new technology. Forces of change make young people visible in the library, because attempts to limit access to information and new technologies that promise to improve our connections and impact are highly public activities.
Loretta Gaffney, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, is studying Family Friendly Libraries, an organization founded in 1995 to promote what she described as “nostalgic yearnings” for libraries as safe places for children. Gaffney looked at how FFL marshaled support from other conservative groups in order to gain adherents. “The library is a significant site of struggle in the culture wars of the 1990s and 2000s,” she reported.
Similarly, Emily Knox of Rutgers University examined controversy that arose from a Midwestern public library’s website links. Citizens objected to site referrals that promoted sexual health information of which they disapproved, which led to further complaints about what young people might find on library shelves.
Knox explained these protests as outgrowths of the way reading is understood in certain faith traditions. For those who see reading the Bible as a path to salvation, she argued, it may be inherently difficult to accept that reading about sexuality does not, in turn, result in damnation. Her thoughtful analysis points to the need for youth services librarians to understand the nuances of community values.
Taking to the air
Cindy Welch, youth services coordinator and assistant professor of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee, recounted how librarians took to the air when radio was a brand-new, even experimental, medium. Storytelling and readers’ theater formed the core of librarians’ on-air activity in 1922, shortly after radio became a viable technology. By 1941, when the ALA Audio-Visual Committee conducted a survey, librarians produced successful scripts and lists of 700 books that had been promoted through their programs. Welch quoted Chicago Public librarian Alice Farquhar as observing at the time, “We have been broadcasting since 1925, on every current and defunct station, with more or less success, but it is only now that we feel really awakened to the situation.” One of the questions Welch raised is why librarians’ pioneering efforts to connect with youngsters via the new medium is so little known; despite prolific programming, librarians seldom appear in histories of radio.
Two other presentations suggested why scholars turn their attention to these subjects: A public disagreement over institutional mission or a demonstration of technological bravura creates its own records. When what has taken place is far from routine, finding the traces of those library activities is easier. When it comes to everyday matters such as circulating novels and storybooks—activities, Florida State University professor and library historian Wayne Wiegand argued, that comprise the vast majority of public library use—records are hard to come by.
That’s part of what makes the What Middletown Read project at Ball State University so amazing: The recovery of nearly forgotten library records, contextualized by other historic data, provides an amazingly rich portrait of library use at the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th centuries. Wiegand and the collaborative research of Ball State invite us to think about what resources will be available to tell the story of young people’s library use in the here and now.
