Book/Printed Material American Libraries 1730–1950: Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks in Architecture, Design & Engineering

Kenneth Breisch (author), Carla Hayden (foreword)

The cover photograph shows the interior of the Arthur Friedman Library at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, MD

Through 500 photographs and plans selected from the encyclopedic collections of the Library of Congress, this volume traces the development of libraries in the United States, providing a history and panorama of these much-loved structures, encompassing the small personal collection, the vast university library, and everything in between.

W. W. Norton in association with the Library of Congress
8.5 x 11 inches

Publication Date: September 5, 2017

Format ISBN Price Pages Illustrations
Hardcover 9780393731606 $75.00 320 500

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Description

Although new technologies appear poised to alter it, the library remains a powerful site for discovery, and its form is still determined by the geometry of the book and the architectural spaces devised to store and display it. American Libraries provides a history and panorama of these much-loved structures, inside and out, encompassing the small personal collection, the vast university library, and everything in between.

Through 500 photographs and plans selected from the encyclopedic collections of the Library of Congress, Kenneth Breisch traces the development of libraries in the United States, from roots in such iconic examples as the British Library and Paris’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève to institutions imbued with their own American mythology.

Author Information

  • Kenneth Breisch directs the historic preservation program at the University of Southern California. He is the author of numerous publications on American architectural history, especially in the areas of library design and vernacular building.

  • Carla Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress.

Praise

“Librarians will be gratified to read Breisch’s discussion of the ways in which librarians became critics of library planning, pushing for designs that were more practical. … American Libraries has a wider focus than many other books on this subject.” ―Libraries: Culture, History & Society

"An impressively informative history of the evolution of the library in America." ―Midwest Book Review

Contents

  • Foreword
  • The Library in America
  • 1 Private Collections
  • 2 Academic Libraries
  • 3 The Library of Congress
  • 4 Large Urban Libraries
  • 5 Small Public Libraries
  • 6 The Carnegie Era
  • Afterword
  • Bibliography
  • Index

Sample

A spread from the book shows black and white photos of the construction of the Library of Congress from 1888 to 1897 alongside captions
A spread from the book shows a color photograph of the exterior of Yale University's Beinecke Library and the interior of Phillps Exeter Academy Library
A spread from the book shows a color photograph of the lobby and mural in the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington DC, with text on the right-hand side

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