Yankee Librarian in the Diamond City: Hannah Packard James, the Osterhout Free Library of Wilkes-Barre, and the Public Library Movement in Pennsylvania

Abstract

Nearly twenty-five years ago, Laurel Grotzinger wrote about the “paucity, perils, and pleasures” of researching women in librarianship. Citing the lack of “herstory” in library history scholarship, as well as the absence of librarianship in works on women’s history, Grotzinger found few studies that used primary source material to interpret female librarians within the context of their times. Since then, there have been numerous articles and book chapters documenting female librarians.... Yet few if any have studied women in Pennsylvania. In fact, there has been no article in either Pennsylvania History or the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography on women librarians in the past forty years.