School libraries biography

The first comprehensive history of American public school librarianship.

"Can I get a library pass?" Over the past 120 years, millions of American K–12 public school students have asked that question.

Still, we know little about the history of public school libraries, which over the decades were pulled together and managed by hundreds of thousands of school librarians. In American Public School Librarianship, Wayne A.

Wiegand recounts the unseen history of both school libraries and their librarians.

Why, Wiegand asks, did school librarianship turn out the way it did? And what can its history tell us about limitations and opportunities in the coming decades of the twenty-first century?

Addressing issues of race, social class, gender, and sexual orientation (among others) as they affected American public school librarianship throughout its history, Wiegand explores how libraries were transformed by the Great Depression, th