Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface
Introduction — Christine Pawley
Part 1: Methods and Evidence
Community Places and Reading Spaces: Main Street Public Library in the Rural Heartland, 1876–1956 — Wayne A. Wiegand
Reading Library Records: Constructing and Using the What Middletown Read Database — Frank Felsenstein, John Straw, Katharine Leigh, and James J. Connolly
"Story Develops Badly, Could Not Finish": Member Book Reviews at the Boston Athenæum in the 1920s — Ross Harvey
"A Search for Better Ways into the Future": The Library of Congress and Its Users in the Interwar Period — Jane Aikin
Part 2: Public Libraries, Readers, and Localities
Going to “America”: Italian Neighborhoods and the Newark Free Public Library, 1900–1920 — Ellen M. Pozzi
"A Liberal and Dignified Approach": The John Toman Branch of the Chicago Public Library and the Making of Americans, 1927–1940 — Joyce M. Latham
Counter Culture: The World as Viewed from Inside the Indianapolis Public Library, 1944–1956 — Jean Preer
Part 3: Intellectual Freedom
Censorship in the Heartland: Eastern Iowa Libraries during World War I — Julia Skinner
Locating the Library in the Nonlibrary Censorship of the 1950s: Ideological Negotiations in the Professional Record — Joan Bessman Taylor
“Is Your Public Library Family Friendly?”: Libraries as a Site of Conservative Activism, 1992–2002 — Loretta M. Gaffney
The Challengers of West Bend: The Library as a Community Institution — Emily Knox
Part 4: Librarians and the Alternative Press
Meta-Radicalism: The Alternative Press by and for Activist Librarians — Alycia Sellie
From the Underground to the Stacks and Beyond: Girl Zines, Zine Librarians, and the Importance of Itineraries through Print Culture — Janice A. Radway
Contributors
Index

For well over one hundred years, libraries open to the public have played a crucial part in fostering in Americans the skills and habits of reading and writing, by routinely providing access to standard forms of print: informational genres such as newspapers, pamphlets, textbooks, and other reference books, and literary genres including poetry, plays, and novels. In the early twenty-first century, the American Library Association reports that there are more public library branches than McDonald's restaurants in the United States. Much has been written about libraries from professional and managerial points of view, but less so from the perspectives of those most intimately involved -- patrons and librarians. Drawing on circulation records, patron reviews, and other archived materials, this collection underscores the evolving roles that libraries have played in the lives of American readers. Each essay examines a historical circumstance related to reading in libraries. The essays are organized in sections on methods of researching the history of reading in libraries; immigrants and localities; censorship issues; and the role of libraries in providing access to alternative, nonmainstream publications. The volume shows public libraries as living spaces where individuals and groups with diverse backgrounds, needs, and desires encountered and used a great variety of texts, images, and other media throughout the twentieth century