Wayne A. Wiegand. American Public School Librarianship: A History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. 360p. Hardcover, $49.95 (ISBN: 978-1-4214-4150-1).

Abstract

As I write this, New England and the Mid-Atlantic are digging out from a Nor’easter that dumped 20 to 30 inches of snow on coastal towns. Thinking about Wayne Wiegand’s stature in the library history discipline as I experience these wintry conditions, the metaphor that comes to mind is of a rugged pathbreaker who is the first to trudge across a cold, unwelcoming field, making a way for followers who will gratefully fit their feet into his steps. Wiegand’s The Politics of an Emerging Profession (Greenwood, 1986) and Irrepressible Reformer (1996) remain valuable starting points for researching the early history of the American Library Association and for understanding Melvil Dewey, one of the profession’s controversial but foundational individuals. More recently, Wiegand’s Part of Our Lives (Oxford, 2015) has called into question how libraries understand themselves, valuing their role in information-seeking/vetting at the expense of recreational reading materials, community social spaces, and other offerings that library users cherish. His insights on those fronts have influenced my own work and will likely shape a generation or more of scholars.