‘Very useful as well as ornamental’: social libraries in early American communities



Jones, Sophie H ORCID: 0000-0001-6655-0417
(2021) ‘Very useful as well as ornamental’: social libraries in early American communities. Library & Information History, 37 (2). pp. 109-130.

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Abstract

Responding to previous analyses of eighteenth-century subscription libraries which focus primarily on the 'useful' — namely, access to books — this article instead considers the 'ornamental' aspects of library membership. Taking the colony of New York as a case study, it explores the ways in which the members of disparate, individual proprietary libraries were active participants in a broader, Atlantic-wide social movement, balancing elements of politeness, sociability, and an emerging civic society with the practical quest for the acquisition of knowledge. Primarily comprising an analysis of the early records of the New York Society Library, this article forms a prosopographical study of the library's membership before the American Revolution, before exploring the social, commercial and familial connections between members. It ultimately concludes that early American social libraries both shaped and were shaped by the communities which they served, and highlights the potential of biographical approaches to library history for enhancing current understandings of early American communities.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: subscription libraries, early America, New York, sociability, civic society, prosopography
Divisions: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Histories, Languages and Cultures
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 13 Aug 2021 07:30
Last Modified: 18 Jan 2023 21:33
DOI: 10.3366/lih.2021.0062
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3133269