Libraries as an Agency of Culture

Also published as a special issue of American Studies, Vol. 42, no. 3 (fall 2001). Contents: American libraries and agencies of culture / Thomas Augst Sound of the civic : reading noise at the New York Public Library / Ari Kelman High culture, low culture : the singular duality of the Library of Congress / Elizabeth Jane Aikin Home libraries and the institutionalization of everyday practices among antebellum New Englanders / Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracno Zboray Reading versus the red bull : cultural constructions of democracy and the public library in cold war Wisconsin / Christine Pawley Celebration of health in the Celebration Library / Juris Dilevko and Lisa Gottlieb Exploring the American idea at the New York Public Library / Jean L. Preer "We have become too tender-hearted" : the language of gender in the public library, 1880-1920 / Jacalyn Eddy Roosevelt Presidential Library : a shift in commemoration / Benjamin Hufbauer Antebellum libraries in Richmond and New Orleans and the search for the practices and preferences of "real" readers / Emily B. Todd