What Middletown Read: Print Culture in an American Small City

Employs circulation records from the Muncie, Indiana, Public Library to examine reading habits. The records were used to created the "What Middletown Read Database" that contains information for over 6,000 library patrons and nearly 180,000 library transactions from 1891 to 1902. Contents: "Now we are a city": portrait of a boomtown "A magnificent array of books": the origins and development of the Muncie Public Library Cosmopolitan trends: print culture and the public library in 1890s Muncie Borrowing patterns: the Muncie Public Library and its patrons "Bread sweet as honey": reading, education, and the public library Reading and reform: the role of fiction in the civic imagination of Muncie's activist women Schoolboys and social butterflies: profiling Middletown readers Epilogue. Looking backward, looking forward Appendix. The What Middletown read database