Assessing what we wrote: a review of the Libraries & Culture literature reviews, 1967-2002.

Biennial literature reviews, somewhat rare in library and historical scholarship, have become integral to the scholarly apparatus of American library history since their inception in 1967. This essay surveys the history and structure of the reviews, tracing trends in our specialized culture and making observations about some of the more significant historiographical debates. The reviews illustrate transitions from institutional history to book culture, the rise of multiethnic and gender studies, and variations in theoretical frameworks. Suggestions for future directions appear in analyses of work by some of our most provocative and productive scholars.

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Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, 
calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, 
light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgiastic, reliable, 
deep and long-lasting. 
Germaine Greer 
 
But the library is a gorgeous language that you will never speak 
fluently. 
Elizabeth McCracken, The Giant's House 

For nearly four decades we historians of American libraries and librarianship have had someone looking over our shoulders every couple of years, reading all that we wrote, offering equal doses of criticism and encouragement as we traversed historiographical journeys. As one of those who participated in this exercise of criticism and prodding, I can imagine my efforts were not always well received, but critics seldom have shame, so I did the best I could, letting the chips fall. And, for the most part, it was great fun, because it kept me focused on the not inconsiderable task of staying current with the sustained outpouring of historical writings whose subject was American libraries and librarianship. As the most recent of these commentators, I will readily admit that I stood on the shoulders of giants.

When Louis Shores, who energetically launched the Journal of Library History in the fall of 1966, announced in the October 1968 issue the creation of a "planned continuing feature," authored by the young historian Michael H. Harris, that would review the publications in American library history, he set in motion something that would continue long past his tenure as editor. (1) Harris, an up and coming library historian, had recently published A Guide to Research in American Library History and was completing his doctorate. (2) Harris's first effort surveyed the publications of a single year (1967), but subsequent essays expanded that coverage to two and, on one occasion, three years.

Given that these essays have appeared like clockwork, we sometimes forget that such reviews are a rarity in library scholarship. The closest thing I could find to the L & C essays is Hannelore B. Rader's annual review of the literature of library instruction that began in 1984. (3) In the larger historical literature reviews are also rare. Beyond the review section that concludes nearly every historical journal we have, for example, the venerable Reviews in American History, which covers the waterfront with critical assessments by numerous authors. And, of course, we have annual bibliographies such as those published by the Journal of Southern History entitled "Southern History in Periodicals" and Jean-Pierre V. M. Herubel's annual compilation of articles on French history for the French Historical Review. But neither of these contains a narrative critique. Similarly, the Journal of American History and the Journal of Military History publish extensive bibliographies of current historical writings, also without critical comment.

The realm of literary studies offers something akin to our review essays with such publications as The Year's Work in English Studies or The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies. These massive volumes with dozens of contributors do not compare exactly, but they do represent a similar effort to measure the scholarly output created during a specific recent time period. (I might note here that our early essays were titled "The Year's Work in American Library History.") Over the years, in content and coverage, the Libraries & Culture review essays fall somewhere between the multiauthored reviews found in Reviews in American History and the quite lengthy (and also often multiauthored) analyses published in the Year's Work volumes. We are grateful that Shores had the foresight to establish the biennial review, because it remains relatively unique in the world of scholarship.

The L & C review essays were part of a concerted effort, dating from the mid-1960s, on the part of the American library history community to develop research tools for our library past. In 1974 Harris produced a second edition of A Guide to Research in American History and then was joined by Donald G. Davis, Jr., for a broadly recast new edition, American Library History: A Bibliography, which appeared in 1978. Davis and John Mark Tucker doubled the coverage of the 1978 volume for their new edition, which identified the literature from its beginnings through 1986 and was published in 1989. In 1990 I began compiling a bibliography of American library history scholarship that appeared twice yearly in the LHRT Newsletter. Complementing this bibliographical work, Harris had assembled a collection of significant historical pieces--Reader in American Library History--that appeared in 1971 and has not been updated. A new reader would be a most welcome addition to library historical scholarship. (4)

Other reference works devoted to library history include the three editions of the Dictionary of American Library Biography (DALB), which began with the base volume in 1978, edited by George S. Bobinski, Jesse Hauk Shera, and Bohdan Wynar. Wayne Wiegand edited the first Supplement to the DALB (1990), and Donald G. Davis, Jr., issued the Second Supplement in 2003. Meanwhile, these essential biographical sources were joined by the equally important Encyclopedia of Library History, which the venerable scholars Wiegand and Davis edited in 1994. (5) The L & C review essays constitute one building block--though admittedly an important block--of a carefully constructed edifice of reference sources designed to assist scholars and others interested in the history of American libraries and librarianship. Today's library historians benefit from decades of diligent work by their scholarly forebearers.

The organizational structure of the nineteen essays illustrates transitions in the scholarly landscape over thirty-five years. Table 1 shows the subject headings used over the years by Harris and his successors with topical areas evolving from Harris's initial…