Lending Libraries Research Articles

Non-Traditional Lending Libraries in Oregon

Non-Traditional Lending Libraries in Oregon

Reading the Late-Romantic Lending Library: Authorship and the Anxiety of Anonymity in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Late Work

Combining findings from the sociology of literature, the history of the book and reading, and studies on the materiality of the text, this paper reassesses a late-Romantic ‘scene of reading’ in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s My Cousin’s Corner Window (1822). This ‘scene of reading’ presents the lending library as one of the central institutions of Romanticism and depicts anonymity as a crucial mode of Romantic authorship. Furthermore, Hoffmann’s ‘scene of reading’ focuses on the significant and problematic fact that literary communication is ‘anonymized’ by the uniform materiality of the bookbindings used in late-Romantic lending libraries and associated reading practices.

Libraries, Schoolrooms, and Mud Gadowns: Formal Scenes of Reading at East India Company Stations in India, c. 1819–1835

AbstractThe East India Company began to establish lending libraries for soldiers at its stations in India from about 1891 and, by the early 1830s, the majority of those responsible for the day-to-day operation of these institutions were keen to stress their beneficial effect upon the readers who frequented them. In a series of reports that were written at this time station chaplains and commanding officers emphasised that reading was having a positive effect upon the men's behaviour. What also emerges from these reports is evidence of a contemporary belief that the ‘setting’ in which reading took place determined the degree to which the activity was beneficial.

Ebooks and Interlibrary Loan: Licensed to Fill?

Increasingly, libraries of all types and sizes are adding electronic book (ebook) titles to their collections. A survey was used to explore the implications of ebook licensing and interlibrary loan use. Among academic libraries in the United States, a widespread preference for handling print books was found along with a need for more information about ebook interlibrary loan rights at one's own institution and a means to identify format type available from potential lending libraries.

Publishing Culture and the 'Reading Nation': German Book History in the Long Nineteenth century

In the history of publishing culture, the long nineteenth century, ranging from the late eighteenth century to the Weimar Republic, is seen as the century of words and books, with an unprecedented boom of literary styles and modes and a growth in the importance of newspapers, journals, encyclopedias and novels. We are well informed about the development of the book market, book prices, the history of lending libraries and publishing houses, recently summarized in the voluminous and comprehensive multi-authored Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, but little is in fact known about the relationship between book history and political and cultural history. The volume under review—the outcome of three sessions on publishing for the national meeting of the Modern Language Association in 2007—is therefore extremely welcome. The studies explore a multitude of themes, focusing on books, their status as aesthetic objects of modern consumer culture, and the ways they were marketed to potential readers.

Reading Societies and Lending Libraries in Nineteenth-Century Norway

During the nineteenth century quite a few reading societies, parish collections, and lending libraries were established in Norway. They were important components in the formation of modern Norway. Based mainly on printed catalogues from such collections, the article shows that during this period books became ubiquitous and Norwegian reading habits, as expressed in the selection of authors in these reading societies, mirrored other societal developments, such as secularization and a desire for entertainment. Although urban and rural Norway showed some difference in literary preference, the desire to raise everybody's level of information was a common goal. A comparison with the development in the other Scandinavian countries is also made.

The Age of Visions and Arguments: Parliamentarianism and the National Public Sphere in Early Meiji Japan (review)

Reviewed by: The Age of Visions and Arguments: Parliamentarianism and the National Public Sphere in Early Meiji Japan Stephen Vlastos The Age of Visions and Arguments: Parliamentarianism and the National Public Sphere in Early Meiji Japan BY Kyu Hyun Kim. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008. Pp. xix + 520. $49.50. Kyu Hyun Kim's book aims to do more than fill a gap in the English-language history of the Freedom and People's Rights (jiyū minken) movement. Focusing on the fifteen-year period preceding the promulgation of 1889 Meiji Constitution, Kim analyzes the process through which "visions and arguments" of constitutional, representative government—which he terms "parliamentarianism"—became politically ascendant. The parliamentary movement, he argues, acted as the catalyst for the formation of Meiji civil society; Japanese civil society in the 1870s and 1880s was strong, not weak; and advocates of representative government resolutely pushed their demands, using the press and public lectures to mobilize public opinion. Reversing the conventional analysis, Kim asserts "it was the weak [Meiji] state that, by carefully modulating its strategies of compromise and coercion, steadily gained ground against the society" (p. 12). In the introduction Kim lays out his theoretical and methodological positions with admirable clarity. He adopts Charles Taylor's definition of civil society as a "web of autonomous associations of people, independent of the state, which binds citizens together in matters of common concern, and by their mere existence or action can have an effect of public policy" (cited on p. 6) and Jurgen Habermas's related conception of the public sphere as performing "the tasks of criticism and control which a public body of citizens informally—and in periodic elections, formally as well—practices vis-à-vis the ruling structure [End Page 282] organized in the form of a state" (p. 8). Finally, following Mary Elizabeth Berry, he wishes to separate the public sphere in Meiji Japan from the "telos of democracy" (p. 11). Quoting Berry, he argues against production of the democratic subject as the litmus test of a functioning political sphere; it is sufficient that there be a space "where leadership was scrutinized and disciplined by criticism" (p. 11). Taylor and Habermas provide a coherent and dynamic conceptual framework for the analysis that follows. Kim's book copiously documents and narrates the emergence of a vibrant public sphere in Japan that began in the early 1870s and was populated by metropolitan journalists, writers, defense lawyers, teachers, and civil servants. The other players in the People's Rights movement have been well studied: Tosa and Hizen former samurai (shizoku) politicians, radical intellectuals and revolutionaries, and village "local notables" who organized political societies, sponsored lending libraries and schools, and orchestrated the massive petition campaign in 1880–1881 demanding a constitution and elected national assembly. Kim's account of the crucial role played by Tokyo intellectuals nicely rounds out the picture. After the introduction, Kim's narrative of parliamentarianism's progress unfolds both chronologically and thematically, with some but not too much overlap and backtracking. The two chapters that make up Part 1 locate the origins of Japanese "public opinion" (kōgi yoron) in the late Tokugawa period. Kim makes a good case for late Edo satirical popular print media and sakariba (open spaces of commercial entertainment such as Asakusa and Ryōgoku) as incubators of the post-1868 public sphere. He provides documentation of the former in reproductions of late Tokugawa prints. Evidence of the role he attributes to sakariba is inferential, but it is hard to deny the likely significance of tea houses, candy shops, vendors, and open air performances of all kinds that allowed "consumers of popular culture [to] congregate with one another without heeding any societal mandates or obligations" (p. 31). Part 2, which is the heart of the book, details the rise and heyday of the parliamentarian movement between 1874 and 1882. Key to Kim's conception of the early Meiji public sphere is the proposition that government officials and public intellectuals were substantially in agreement in envisioning a role for public opinion in policy making. In Chapter 3 Kim makes a good case that some officials at the top—Ōkubo and Ōkuma, for example—and many...

名所図会に描かれた庭園を伴う遊楽施設の空間利用に関する基礎考察

The purpose of this paper is to consider characteristics of space use of recreational facilities with gardens depicted in Meisyo-zue. The facilities were mainly divided into two categories, such as restaurants and hot spring inns. The restaurants thrived around the Kyoto and Osaka areas, while the hot spring inns were represented by Hyogo, Nagano and Hakone areas. The restaurants were mainly enjoyed in the group, while the hot spring inns were mostly used by individuals. Neverthless, the restaurants and hot spring inns shared a number of common characteristics in terms of recreation and space structures. Recreational facilities had major options, such as scenic appreciation, igo, kemari, shamisen, cha-no-yu. Hot spring inns also had lending libraries and outdoor recreational options in fields and rivers. These recreational options were complemented with excellent scenic locations, gardens with high buildings for scenic appreciation, ponds and springs for refreshing in the cool air,fields for playing kemari and tea ceremony rooms with the adjacent gardens for enjoying cha-no-yu. The recreational facilities with gardens were characterized by a space structure with elements not for personal pleasure, but to fulfill various kinds of pleasure considering many and unspecific customers.

The Other Brown v. Board of Education

The Other Brown v. Board of Education Kenneth R. Bailey In 1928, long before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision ended official segregation in education in the United States, Anderson H. Brown and a group of black residents sued the Charleston (West Virginia) Independent School District to allow blacks to use the former state capitol annex which had been purchased for use as the Charleston library. The suit, captioned as Brown v. Board of Education of the Charleston Independent School District, resulted from a decision to segregate the library which had previously been used by both races. The change in policy was directly related to the influence and money of one prominent white supporter, Albert E. Humphreys, and marked a switch in attitude toward the separation of the races in West Virginia's capital city. The Charleston Public Library, now the main branch of the Kanawha County Public Library System, had been created in 1909 by the Woman's Kanawha Literary Club. This group, which had established a tradition of promoting literacy, recognized that, though Charleston occasionally had lending libraries promoted and run by book stores, there was no ongoing establishment in the city to allow ready, and free, access to books. The members of the literary club organized meetings to promote a library and recruited George S. Laidley, the superintendent of the Charleston Independent School District, to lead the effort to raise funds for a public library. After a year-long fund drive, the group opened a library in two rooms of the newly constructed YMCA in downtown Charleston. In addition, a trained librarian, Mabel Delle Jones, was employed to staff the library. Though she remained in her position only four years, Jones established a professional operation that was continued and improved upon by successive librarians to the present.1 In its early years, the library grew as books were donated and the number of patrons increased. Members of both races used the library, apparently with no controversy, and both races supported the library. The biggest problems, in the library's infancy, were the inability to find a permanent home for the main collection and a lack of secure funding. The library [End Page 53] depended on donations for its existence, even though it attempted to attach itself to the school district and to utilize its levying ability. State law did not provide for school districts to support public libraries until a 1911 law authorized them to levy taxes for that purpose. Upon passage of the law, the Charleston Independent School District levied a property tax on behalf of a library and funding for basic library services was assured. Even though it was dependent on the school district for most of its funding, the library was run by an independent board which included George S. Laidley, the superintendent of the school system, in its membership.2 Soon after receiving funding from the school district, library board members began to discuss building a permanent home for the library collection. There was talk but no action and instead, after two years in the YMCA, the library was asked to move to make way for new "Y" programs. The library moved to the Kanawha Presbyterian Church manse for a few months and then to the YWCA for about a year. Forced out once again, the library found quarters in a building on the corner of Kanawha Street (now Boulevard) and MacFarland Street where it would remain for seven years. In 1921, the library was asked to move from that facility to make way for a business that wanted the building, and the library moved to the former Red Cross building which was located on the river bank near what is now Haddad Park. During the seven years on MacFarland Street, the Charleston Independent School District and the taxpayers provided a level of funding sufficient to establish branches of the library on Charleston's West Side (Lincoln Branch, 1917) and on Shrewsbury Street (1919) in an area that was shared by both blacks and whites, but was predominately black. Both branches were used by white and black residents of Charleston, as was the main library. The library board...

Karol Reyzner (1803-1887) – wydawca, księgarz i drukarz poznański

The book market in Poznań at the turn of the 1920s and the 1930s got a particular boost and encouragement. Following a temporary softening of the strict policy of the German authorities towards the Poles, Polish lending libraries and bookshops publishing in Polish and for the Poles began to crop up. The press market, publishing both local newspapers and journals, enjoyed a particular development. Karol Reyzner was a lesser known publisher and undoubtedly stayed in the shade of more eminent and prominent figures such as Walenty Stefański, Jan K. Żupański, Napoleon Kamieński, Antoni Popliński and Ludwik Merzbach. His influence upon the local book market was far less intensive than that of the above mentioned publishers as his publications were not that numerous or important. However, K. Reyzner managed to survive on the market for as long as half a century, i.e. for a much longer period than many other prominent local Polish publishers of the time. Publishing primarily books for less educated people and specializing in publications with no scientific or literary aspirations, simple and cheap judging from the editorial standards, he nevertheless carried out an important social function. The present article discusses the history of Reyzner’s printing office and its publishing output, additionally outlining the role of the lending library attached to the printing office – the first one managed by a Pole and targeted at the local Polish population. The analysis of the still existing catalogues of the library indicates that, unlike the publishing activity of the firm, the lending library addressed much more cultured and refined reader, which is manifested by the content of the collection that included many accomplished works written by prominent authors or researchers of the time.

Imperial Reading?: The East India Company’s Lending Libraries for Soldiers, c. 1819–1834

Imperial Reading? The East India Company’s Lending Libraries for Soldiers, c. 1819–1834 Sharon Murphy (bio) Britain enjoyed unparalleled overseas expansion in the years between 1780 and 1830, consolidating her rule over India and parts of Canada, and developing or adding greatly to her colonial possessions in Australia, South Africa, and the Caribbean.1 During this same period, “a new cultural and social phenomenon known as ‘the rise of the reading public’” emerged, with readers avidly consuming the prose fiction that rolled off the nation’s printing presses.2 That this prose fiction, in particular the novel, crucially facilitated the spread of empire has been persuasively argued by theorists and critics who suggest that the form worked in complex ways to prepare readers to imagine and, hence, “accommodate” Britain’s imperial expansion. Works such as Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Mansfield Park (1814), it has been suggested, contributed to the naturalization of a sense of England’s cultural and military power, and promoted notions of racial identity that made a British Empire seem both inevitable and necessary to the reading public. This is not to say that writers like Daniel Defoe or Jane Austen self-consciously set out to promote imperial ideology in their writing, but rather that their works illuminated “the far from accidental convergence between . . . patterns of narrative authority constitutive of the novel on the one hand, and, on the other, a complex ideological configuration underlying the tendency to imperialism.”3 Despite the attention that has been paid to the link between the novel and empire, critics have devoted strangely little effort to identifying the types of fiction that may have been read by actual soldiers or sailors, the British Empire’s most immediate agents. They tend to take it for granted that the [End Page 74] “reading public” lived and worked in the British Isles.4 Even Gauri Viswanathan’s pioneering study of the introduction of English literature in nineteenth-century India and how it facilitated imperial ideology focused on the colonized subject rather than the colonizer. Its analysis of “the Englishman actively participating in the cruder realities of conquest, commercial aggrandizement, and disciplinary management of natives” assumed that this Englishman was the producer rather than the consumer of the type of “knowledge that empowers him to conquer, appropriate, and manage” other lands.5 A crucial issue thus largely unaddressed by critics is what happened to the English text when it was read by an English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish man in a place such as nineteenth-century India; that is, by readers who were sustaining Britain’s imperial presence. Viswanathan contends that, for Indian readers, such texts functioned “as a surrogate Englishman in his highest and most perfect state, [becoming] a mask for economic exploitation”: was this ideological effect in some way diluted, erased, or reversed when English, Scots, Welsh, or Irish were the consumers?6 A further issue that arises here is whether those responsible for overseeing “the imperial mission of educating and civilizing colonial subjects [in India] in the literature and thought of England” realized this mission could or should be extended to British soldiers; whether there was a recognition that this, too, might “in the long run [serve] to strengthen Western cultural hegemony in enormously complex ways.”7 This article will raise such questions by examining the East India Company’s decision to establish lending libraries for soldiers at its stations in India during the early 1820s and 1830s. Historians Peter Stanley and Linda Colley have provided tantalizing glimpses of this evidence, pointing out that, by the 1830s, these institutions contained works like Robinson Crusoe as well as “religious tracts in abundance.”8 As we will see, though, East India Company records provide real insights into the motivations and responses of those who established, operated, and/or used the libraries, as well as into holdings and borrowing patterns at some of the stations.9 Close study of the records thus enables us to understand conflicting responses to literacy and to fiction, without falling afoul of what has been called “the receptive fallacy”: that is, the way in which much literary criticism tries “to discern the message a text transmits to an audience by...

Practicing For Print: The Hale Children's Manuscript Libraries

As a home amusement and a form of literary apprenticeship, two generations of children in the same elite Boston family created their own lending libraries of hand-made books. The institutional procedures the Hale children invented for their libraries, and the contents of the books they illustrated and wrote, offer astute commentary on adult literary practices, and provide a rare vantage onto children's own attitudes towards books and reading. The Hale libraries give evidence not only of how books socialize child readers, but also of the many ways in which print culture can be modified and re-imagined by children's play.

Assessing Generic Learning Outcomes in public lending libraries

PurposeThis paper aims to outline some key results from the “Reading a Difference” survey carried out by Devon County Council's Corporate Consultation Service with Devon Library and Information Service among libraries across the South West of England in 2006. The principal aim of this study was to create and disseminate a learning outcome assessment tool for all public library authorities in the South West of England to inform future policy and research decisions of the South West Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.Design/methodology/approachThe paper explores the use of in book questionnaires to illicit learning experiences from readers as a cost effective method of data collection. It outlines work carried out by to consider the assessment of learning outcomes from book loans to adults within the South West of England.FindingsThe paper finds that it is clear that an assessment tool for learning outcomes can be developed for use within public libraries, and that there is scope for further research on the learning processes to inform policy and the end users. Alongside the theoretical approach to surveying learning outcomes, there are practical outcomes to be explored by public libraries in studying this data. The willingness of the public to engage with library services in this way was in itself positive and the comments made have been used to inform service changes and reaffirm what libraries are currently doing well, or not.Originality/valueThe paper demonstrates that this type of study can inform managers of the requirements of service delivery and strategic overview of learning within libraries.

Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices (review)

John Travers. Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices. Edited by Emanuel Rubin. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 74.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, c2005. [Acknowledgments, p. vi; introd., p. vii-xvii; texts, p. xviii-xxi; 4 plates; score, 85 p.; crit. report, p. 87-89. ISBN 0-89579-567-1. $63.] Emanuel Rubin's claim that the Georgian part-song repertory will undoubtedly pleasure (p. ix) both singer and listener is rather hyperbolic in the context of notes for scholarly modern edition, but the assertion is nevertheless nearly sustainable. With this volume in Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, Rubin reintroduces John Travers's superb Eighteen Canzonets for Two and Three Voices (London: John Simpson, 1746), written for various combinations of two or three voice parts and continuo. Originally available by subscription purchase or through lending libraries, and sung for entertainment in private gatherings at homes or in public singing clubs, these pieces will bring pleasure in variety of present-day settings, from vocal studio, recital stage, participatory entertainment among amateurs. They would also enliven theater productions set in eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century England. Certainly, they deserve be recorded, perhaps with number of selections from the enormous and underexplored repertory which they belong (secular genres known glees, fa-las, madrigals, Neapolitans, ayres, songs, and still other appellations), or perhaps in collection arranged by topic (mythical characters, love, pastoral scenes) or devoted texts of Matthew Prior (1664-1721). Listeners, singers, and continuo players alike will be attracted by these canzonets' varied textures, alternation of syllabic and exuberant melismatic passages, counterpoint (including some artful canons), lively changes of meter, witty texts (eleven by Prior), and vivid text painting. The edition will also bring pleasure scholars in musicology and other fields who seek recover and understand the widely overlooked role of music in the culture of Georgian England. (Further historical background, bibliography, and especially useful clarification regarding nomenclature may be found in Rubin's The English Glee in the Reign of George III: Participatory An Music for an Urban Society, Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, 38 [Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2003].) In his introduction the edition, Rubin helpfully summarizes the collection's ancestry. In the sixteenth century, the part-song flourished alongside the madrigal. Distinction between the two genres, in fact, was blurry: the madrigal was understood be possibly more contrapuntal, while the part-song lute accompaniment-although when sufficient voices were available, the lute was dispensable, making the part-song more madrigalian. In the seventeenth century, proliferation of singing clubs mirrored increased class mobility. You would do well, Edward Ravenscroft's Citizen Turn'd Gentleman is advised, to have Musick Club at your house, and play and sing in consort, it will much benefit you (act 1, scene 1, quoted on p. ? of the introduction). Repertoire by John Blow, Henry Purcell, and others fed the voracious appetites of these clubs, and persisted in collections into the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, even while new clubs also demanded new part-songs as fresh their food and drink (p. ix). The tradition reached the apex of its popularity in the late eighteenth century. Rubin counts more than three thousand glees alone that were published during the reign of George III (1760-1820), a number that would quadruple if the canzonets, rounds, catches, and madrigals were included (p. xi). Not only did this repertory serve an impetus for the massive explosion in London's commercial music publishing, it also brought into contact singers from different walks of life. Rubin accepts conventional wisdom here, citing Percy M. …

Estudio de rentabilidad de la Biblioteca Pública Provincial de Valencia

We have outlined an estimate of the profitability of public libraries based on several models used in the United States that measure cost versus profits in public libraries. The Provincial Public Library of Valencia was chosen because it meets the following conditions: a high level of use, a very heterogeneous public, and reliable economic and user data. Our aim is to show that investment in public libraries is highly profitable in terms of the information and training offered and from a cultural and social point of view. The use of analytical models that measure costs versus profits in public libraries can serve to raise awareness on the part of both citizens and politicians of the benefits of investing in public libraries as well as to highlight the need for investment in public lending libraries to continue to grow. In order to ensure growth in the use of public libraries in Spain, increased investment is clearly needed.

Chicago Public Schools Evaluate Teaching Methods

Chicago Public Schools Evaluate Teaching Methods

Library

The modern library derives from a vision of public service developed in the 19th century. At various times in the past a commercial service, an educational resource, a religious domain and a political institution, the library today exists in various forms, including all these but in addition the professional libraries held by law firms and scientific or technological associations, multimedia lending libraries and certain areas of the world-wide web.

Chapter 4. Lending

Lending to other libraries completes the ILL cycle. Chapter 4 includes a sample “daily timeline” of the activities of the lending section of an ILL department. Additional detailed information on managing the lending workflow is provided along with a sample lending policy document which lending libraries can use to provide uniform service to borrowing libraries.

1927, Year One of the French Film Heritage?

1927, Year One of the French Film Heritage? Christophe Gauthier (bio) Translated by Laure Brost In November 1924 Jean Tedesco, managing director of the Vieux-Colombier movie theatre in Paris, assembled a list of classic film titles he considered representative of the brief history of the cinema to date. He called his list a Répertoire du film, or 'Film Repertory', alluding to the prestigious theatrical past of the Vieux-Colombier theatre, and published it in his journal Cinéa-Ciné pour tous. The publication of this Film Repertory was timed to coincide with the opening of the Vieux-Colombier movie theatre and was meant to attract cinephiles who had been clamoring for a place where film classics could be shown. The Film Repertory pointed to a new attitude toward film history, signaling the maturity of the cinephile movement that had emerged at the end of the 1910s.1 Though Tedesco did not have copies of the films he had promoted to the Repertory, this group of film titles nevertheless represents a reflection on the history of cinema long before the films were actually conserved in cinémathèques and it was also meant to shape young film spectators and filmmakers. In addition, it was a way of giving avant-garde films that had not had the success they deserved when first released a second chance. Tedesco's Film Repertory was brought up to date and published every two years while he was director of Cinéa-Ciné pour tous. Twenty-nine films were selected in 1924, all of them produced after 1915, Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat (1915) being the earliest. 11 were French, including Robert Boudrioz's L'Âtre (1923), Abel Gance's La Roue (1923), Louis Delluc's Fièvre (1921), Marcel L'Herbier's Don Juan et Faust (1923) and Léon Poirier's Jocelyn (1922); nine were American, including D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919), Joseph de Grasse's The Girl I Loved (1923) with Charles Ray, Fred Niblo's The Mark of Zorro (1920) with Douglas Fairbanks, and Chaplin's Shoulder Arms (1918); five German, including Robert Wiene's Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari (1920) and Karl Grüne's Die Strasse (1923), three Swedish and one Italian. Among the American films, Triangle (Griffith, William Hart) and United Artists (Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks) dominated with the same titles that had sparked the cinephile shockwaves which began in 1916-1918. The very creation of this list raised the question of what counted as a film classic, and was thus the first step in what would later be termed a patrimoine cinématographique (a national film heritage or patri-mony).2 Tedesco's Film Repertory was based on the norms of cultural legitimization. It was meant to designate, as Tedesco stated, 'the progress of moving pictures toward art'; and it confirmed the taste of the cinephiles of his generation who had relegated prewar films to obscurity. As film history thus entered the era of film heritage, a hierarchy of directors and films was established, pantheons that sometimes crumbled a few years later, while a considerable number of others were simply ignored. In short, this first history of cinema, established by creating the Film Repertory, was the result of selective memory. In fact, toward the end of the 1920s, the history - or memories - of cinema would find different uses and modes of expression under the influence of groups and networks that were sometimes antagonistic but that shared a common interest in everything regarding the screen. How were these sometimes competitive selective memories of film history established? [End Page 289] The French government and the City of Paris did not share the cinephiles' view. Interested only in film's scientific and pedagogical aspects, they delayed granting film a status that would have qualified it for financial support. However, the promoters of educational film persuaded members of parliament and other government officials to establish the use of film in French schools. Whether secular militants or Catholic workers, they instituted the first film archives known as cinémathèques and determined how they would be used for a long time. These cinémathèques were basically lending libraries rather...

The Cover

The Cover Mary W. LoLordo Click for larger view View full resolution Bookplate. Bookplate courtesy of the Halifax Regional Library Board. This pale yellow bookplate, 8.5 by 11.75 cm, is printed with the words "Presented to the Halifax Memorial Library by the North British Society of Halifax as a Centenary Memorial to Robert Louis Stevenson" and with a black line drawing of Edinburgh Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland, the birthplace of Stevenson (1850-94). It can be found in many of the books about Scotland belonging to the Halifax Public Libraries in Halifax, Nova Scotia. These books are the initial part of a gift given to the library in 1952. The drawing on the bookplate is signed by R. L. deC. H. Saunders (1908-95), a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax from 1937 [End Page 313] to 1973. He was not a member of the North British Society, the organization that donated these books to the library, but he was a Scot, born to Scottish parents in South Africa. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, so he would have known the castle well, and he came to Dalhousie as a professor of anatomy. According to Peter B. Waite in The Lives of Dalhousie (McGill, 1994), he fascinated medical students with his anatomical drawings, which he did on the blackboard with multicolored chalk, using both hands at once. Dr. Saunders also designed the university's coat of arms and the mace used in university ceremonies. There had been a public library in Halifax for many years before this gift was given. The first libraries in the city, though, were private organizations. D. C. Harvey, in Early Libraries of Nova Scotia (Dalhousie Review, 1934), discusses the development of these libraries. For-profit lending libraries that circulated the popular novels of the day were among the first libraries. Private libraries designed to serve specific groups soon followed. These included the Garrison Library, begun in 1817 for military officers, the Central Board of Agriculture Library, established in 1818, and several church congregational libraries. In 1824 the Halifax Library was established by the elite of local society. It was limited to 125 members, who paid an annual shareholder fee to fund the library. Samuel Cunard (1787-1865), the shipping magnate who began his career in Halifax, was a member of the Halifax Library. This library was eventually forced to close because its funds became too limited to allow the library to continue. The first opportunity for the general public to access books came in 1831, when the Halifax Mechanics' Library was formed. This library was open to anyone who could afford the twenty-shilling annual fee, and eventually it contained three thousand volumes. Not everyone in the city could afford to use this library, but it was accessible to citizens of the middle and business classes. However, this library existed for only thirty years before falling into debt and closing. Chief Justice Sir William Young (1799-1887), a shareholder in the Halifax Library, purchased both its collection and that of the Mechanics' Library and gave them to the city to operate as a free institution. A few years later Sir William also donated the one-thousand-book collection of his late brother, George R. Young (1802-53), to this library. This first free public library, the Citizens' Free Library, began its life in a small room in the old city courthouse. Here all the people of Halifax had access to the collection for no charge. By 1873 the library had outgrown its original home and begun its long search for a permanent home and stable funding. When Sir William died in 1887, he left the city four thousand dollars to be used within four years for the erection of a new library [End Page 314] building, but the conditions of the bequest were not fulfilled, and the money was returned to the estate. In 1890, after two unsuccessful attempts to find a permanent location, the library moved to a room in city hall. There it was hoped that the city's aldermen would come into contact with the library more often and become aware of its need for support. However, during...