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aaronj21 's review for:
The Library: A Fragile History
by Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen
This book was something of a mixed bag for me. However, the parts I liked I found very interesting and well done and the parts I didn’t care for weren’t too onerous.
My main complaint was that this book focused almost exclusively on European, and then later on English and American libraries. There were brief mentions of library history and innovations in other countries but these were comparatively terse and confined to a few throwaway sentences. Someone reading this with no prior background at all would come away thinking libraries were largely a phenomenon confined to the global north and the nebulous and increasingly tenuous “West”. The libraries of ancient and medieval China, or of the early Islamic Caliphs merit scarcely a mention. A genuinely global survey of the history of libraries may well be beyond the scope of this or any single book, but in that case a more fitting title may have been in order. This omission is all the more glaring for the relatively large swathes of ink the author spills on other subjects. Most notably the chapters dealing with the private libraries of Renaissance nobles and Dutch merchants seem to go on in extreme length and detail.
I did really appreciate the author’s thesis statement, that most library destruction is a result of neglect, obviated usefulness, or not meeting the needs of the new generation that inherits them. Library histories tend to focus on the spectacular and purposeful destruction of libraries rather than this more common, if less flashy, cause of library death.
The sections closer to modern times dealing with what we would recognizably see as “public libraries” was fascinating and well done. The author adroitly and convincingly showed the lineage of subscription and circulation libraries through to the modern incarnation of tax payer funded libraries open to all. I wish there had been more time devoted to this historical period and far less spent on an exhaustive cataloging of the book collecting habits of Renaissance.
P.S.
The author did give a shout out to Better World Books and mentions how he uses it to buy weeded library books at discount rates. This is something I also do! It's a really neat service for both customers and libraries and more people should use it.
My main complaint was that this book focused almost exclusively on European, and then later on English and American libraries. There were brief mentions of library history and innovations in other countries but these were comparatively terse and confined to a few throwaway sentences. Someone reading this with no prior background at all would come away thinking libraries were largely a phenomenon confined to the global north and the nebulous and increasingly tenuous “West”. The libraries of ancient and medieval China, or of the early Islamic Caliphs merit scarcely a mention. A genuinely global survey of the history of libraries may well be beyond the scope of this or any single book, but in that case a more fitting title may have been in order. This omission is all the more glaring for the relatively large swathes of ink the author spills on other subjects. Most notably the chapters dealing with the private libraries of Renaissance nobles and Dutch merchants seem to go on in extreme length and detail.
I did really appreciate the author’s thesis statement, that most library destruction is a result of neglect, obviated usefulness, or not meeting the needs of the new generation that inherits them. Library histories tend to focus on the spectacular and purposeful destruction of libraries rather than this more common, if less flashy, cause of library death.
The sections closer to modern times dealing with what we would recognizably see as “public libraries” was fascinating and well done. The author adroitly and convincingly showed the lineage of subscription and circulation libraries through to the modern incarnation of tax payer funded libraries open to all. I wish there had been more time devoted to this historical period and far less spent on an exhaustive cataloging of the book collecting habits of Renaissance.
P.S.
The author did give a shout out to Better World Books and mentions how he uses it to buy weeded library books at discount rates. This is something I also do! It's a really neat service for both customers and libraries and more people should use it.