The Yazoo Library Association's Significance in History: The American Social and Public Library Movements in the South

The social library movement was a predecessor of the public library movement in the United States. It was primarily a nineteenth century phenomenon and is generally considered to have laid the foundations for the public library movement that developed around the turn of the century. The ascendent historical scholarship suggests that the movement was primarily a phenomenon of New England and the Midwest, with the South making insignificant contributions. The Yazoo Library Association in Yazoo city, Mississippi, was established as a social library in 1838, and it is still functioning today (1992) as a social library which contracts with local governments to provide public library services. Despite the fact that it was founded during what one library historian refers to as the "golden age" of social libraries and despite the fact that its founding and continued existence as a social library has been documented in local and regional publications, it has never been acknowledged or documented in the national literature of library history.