White Collar Read: The American Public Library and the Left-Led CIO: A Case Study of the Chicago Public Library, 1929--1952

Latham, Joyce M.

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Description

Title

White Collar Read: The American Public Library and the Left-Led CIO: A Case Study of the Chicago Public Library, 1929--1952

Author(s)

Latham, Joyce M.

Issue Date

2007

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Leight Estabrook

Department of Study

Library and Information Science

Discipline

Library and Information Science

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

History, United States

Language

eng

Abstract

This research participates in the ongoing debate about the degree of engagement of public librarians in challenges to dominant social and cultural constructs. This research demonstrates that public librarians involved with the left-led CIO during the late 1930s and through the 1940s collaborated to create an alternative historical bloc that challenged the cultural hegemony dominant within the library profession, within local communities, and encompassing broader societies as a whole. This left-led affiliation was part of a broader cultural front, which emerged from the radical left engagement with the liberal center during the period known as the Popular Front. Within public libraries this front promoted strategies of collective action to engage social issues. The result was not only the professional commitment to intellectual freedom, codified within library policies, but a stronger identification with the diverse service populations of the American public library.

Graduation Semester

2007

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/81544

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