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College and Research Libraries
July 2001, Vol. 62, No. 4

Book Review

McMullen, Haynes. American Libraries before 1876. Foreword by Kenneth E. Carpenter. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr. (Beta Phi Mu Monograph, no. 6), 2000. 179p. $62.50, alk. paper (ISBN 031331277x). LC 99-043164.

Here is a work of extraordinary effort. American Libraries before 1876 presents a compilation of descriptive statistics concerning the history of libraries in early America. Presumably, this work represents Haynes McMullen’s lifetime endeavor. His interest began early in his career when he came across a thirty-page publication issued by the U.S. Bureau of Education in 1876. It was an extensive table identifying American libraries containing at least three hundred volumes. By his own confession, the author tells us that “many years ago I fell in love with [that] table.”

Over the next fifty years, McMullen went on to collect information antecedent to that offered in the table. In American Libraries before 1876, he is careful to define his terms and explain his charts and graphics, giving readers access to detailed information about libraries in the colonies, and later in the young republic, including their numbers, characteristics, founders, and types of collection. Each of these categories is treated in a separate chapter. At the book’s end, there are a useful glossary, a selected bibliography, and an index that belies the detail found in some one hundred fifty pages of categorization.

The statistics are interesting, but the book’s organization is not user-friendly; would that it had been arranged more handily. Although preliminary pages listing illustrations (nineteen tables and six figures) and closing appendices might make for a quick-reference tool, the textual presentation is of less certain merit.

McMullen asks interesting historical questions, for example, “Why did [Americans] establish so many [libraries]?” His less interesting answers include: because they wanted them, because the colonists were “bookish,” because “Benjamin Franklin and his friends set an example,” because business was good or times were prosperous, but not because of density of population. Later, he asks, “Why were the new kinds of libraries appearing in the years before 1875 … being established in the older parts of the country?” Again, his response is unsatisfying. To the latter, he says, “The answer is clear: Americans in the older parts … continued to introduce new kinds of libraries … and people in the newer states made little or no contribution to the variety of libraries that were available.” Included in the reasons for the popularity of the social library is “as fiction increased in popularity in the early nineteenth century, these libraries became better able to meet the emotional needs of their users. In most social libraries, novels seems [sic] to have made up only a small part of the collection; however, some records indicate that fiction circulated heavily” (italics mine).

It is this generalized speculation and conjecture that leaves the publication wanting. Had it been a collection of graphs and charts with the current text largely in explanatory footnote, the book could function well as a reference tool. But as a series of unanswered inquiries, it might be most useful for library school history courses and for doctoral students seeking dissertation topics.

This book clearly involved enormous effort, the painstaking collection of data, and an undeniable joy in discovery. The chapter notes attest to the author’s familiarity with historical scholarship in numerous fields, not the least of which is library history. Library schools would do well to own a copy. but this reviewer, a great fan of libraries and their history, cannot recommend it for other collections or purposes.—Judith Segal, Western Washington University