Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890–1920 by Abigail A. Van Slyck

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 521 Part of a series commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the German trade union IG Bergbau und Energie, it provides a useful starting point for labor, social, political, and comparative historians and for analysts interested in the social construction of technology. Indeed, we need more studies that analyze actors and their changing relationships with technologies, particularly in more integrated, pri­ vate-sector firms such as Krupp or Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG. Kenneth S. Mernitz Dr. Mernitz is associate professor of history at SUNY College at Buffalo and is working on a comparative study of liquid fuels technology in Germany and the United States, 1910-39. Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890-1920. By Abi­ gail A. Van Slyck. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Pp. xxvii+276; illustrations, figures, tables, appendices, notes, bibliog­ raphy, index. $47.50 (cloth). I confess that I am still a bit starded to hear people use their natu­ ral speaking voices in a public library. Abigail Van Slyck’s engaging monograph about the history of Carnegie libraries and the concur­ rent development of the library profession explains the complex his­ torical processes that contribute to my culturally rooted reaction to any library noise above a reverent whisper. Van Slyck is an architec­ tural historian, but her mission in this study is to expand the tradi­ tional boundaries of architectural history by exploring in interdisci­ plinary fashion the social and cultural forces that influenced the design and use of library buildings. Invoking the byword of cultural studies, Van Slyck focuses on the meanings embedded in the built environment, which she teases out through the lenses of gender, class, and economic relations. In the thirty years covered by this book, Carnegie endowed 1,412 communities in the United States with 1,679 libraries at a cost that exceeded $41 million. These gifts ranged in magnitude from the $5.2 million given to New York City for its branch library system to the $5,000 donated to build a library in Exeter, California. That’s a lot oflibraries, and so the question ofCarnegie’s influence on Amer­ ican library buildings, library practice and practitioners, and library users is one that deserves attention. Van Slyck argues that, despite fundamental architectural homogeneity among the libraries, which might suggest an expression ofunified ideology and practice, Carne­ gie libraries were contested ground on which the Carnegie organiza­ tion, architects, library boards, librarians, reformers, and library us­ ers engaged in power struggles over conflicting agendas that represented deeper cultural and social issues of gender, class, race, and professionalization. 522 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Chapters are arranged thematically in ways that feature the various constituent analyses of this complicated story. For example, in chap­ ter 1, titled “Giving: The Reform of American Library Philan­ thropy,” Van Slyck chronicles the evolution of Carnegie’s philan­ thropic ideology from one based on 19th-century ideas of stewardship to a system modeled on standards of efficiency and cor­ porate organization. The library buildings exhibited this shift in the elimination of domestic imagery (fireplaces crowned by a Carnegie portrait) and wasteful monumental spaces and in the trend for using factory and commercial designs as models for efficient use of space. Spaces devoted to book storage also reflected this change. Instead of being guarded as treasures by elitist librarians in restricted book alcoves, the books, housed in new open stack configurations, be­ came increasingly accessible to readers. For Carnegie, efficient cor­ porate organization became the “driving metaphor” for his philan­ thropic enterprise (p. 23). Other chapters highlight equally intriguing power matches. Archi­ tects and librarians both vied for professional affirmation as each claimed legitimacy for library design. Gender and class biases sur­ faced in discussions over siting and between library boards and elected officials. Elitist library trustees sited downtown libraries in places that limited access to working class patrons, while branch li­ braries served as vehicles for progressive reformers to reach immi­ grants and workers, and particularly their children. In small western towns, Carnegie libraries became a more broadly defined social insti­ tution that often evolved out of women’s volunteer experiences. However, Carnegie’s stipulations that recipients fund library mainte...