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18 - Libraries in context: social, cultural and intellectual background

from PART THREE - PROVINCIAL AND METROPOLITAN LIBRARIES 1750–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Joanna Innes
Edited by
Giles Mandelbrote  and
K. A. Manley
Giles Mandelbrote
Affiliation:
British Library, London
K. A. Manley
Affiliation:
University of London
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Summary

The expansion and development of libraries between 1750 and 1850 was stimulated by vigorous population and economic growth, and shaped by changes in social structure and living patterns. Growth was fuelled by expansion in publishing (though of course not all books collected for libraries were new publications). Developments in social organisation and attitudes led to the expansion of new kinds of library, catering to new reading habits. The expansion of libraries raised a series of ethical and political issues: what kinds of reading should be permitted, facilitated or encouraged, and how was this best done? A leitmotif was the idea that libraries had a public function: it was in the public interest that there should exist well-stocked libraries; various kinds of library proclaimed it their mission to serve variously conceived publics; perhaps, it was increasingly argued from the 1830s, there was need for an extended network of ‘public libraries’.

This chapter sketches some broader contexts for library development: demographic, economic, social, cultural and political. However, it needs to be stressed that there exists no certain and determinate ‘context’ in which the history of libraries can be set; historians have more than one idea about the nature of social change in this period. Our ideas about ‘context’ are always liable to shape the way in which we write the history of particulars – to some extent they must and should do this, or our account of particulars will tend towards mere chronicle. But our findings about particulars also have the potential to play back and inform our ideas about context, and it is important that we nourish that potential.

Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland , pp. 283 - 300
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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