Abstract
It takes courage to be an historian. Striding forth from the comfortable knowledge of our own time and place to explore the mysteries of the past, a past often shrouded in a miasma of uncertain memories confounded by missing or incomplete records, we nevertheless seek to explain for ourselves and for others how the present came to be the way it is. Since our last effort, two years have quickly passed, time enough for dozens and dozens of books and journal articles to appear as tokens of our industrious output. It is time once again to gather together the disparate writings that characterize our collective efforts to understand the library past and make some sense out of what we have done. As usual, this essay is broadly conceived, taking into account a wide range of contributions both from active historians and from those who only dabble in our scholarly enterprise. And as usual, the present writer wishes to acknowledge that he stands on the shoulders of giants who established the tradition of this biennial exercise.
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