1911年5月11日，纽约公共图书馆在第五大道和第42街开设了“供书迷使用的大理石宫殿”。这是该市第一个现代意义上的公共图书馆，是一个由税收支持的、向每个公民免费流通的馆藏。然而，在革命之前，纽约的读者可以进入一系列被同时代人理解的“公共图书馆”。从最基本的意义上讲，18世纪和19世纪的大部分时间里，公共图书馆仅仅意味着向公众提供并促进公共利益的共享藏书。从1754年纽约社会图书馆成立到1911年，公共图书馆采取了多种形式。其中一些是免费的慈善机构，而另一些则需要会员资格或年度捐款。其中一些，比如美国圣经协会的圣经图书馆，是高度专业化的；其他一些图书馆，如阿斯特图书馆，则开发了广泛、包容的藏书。这一时期的所有公共图书馆的共同点，至少表面上是这样的，就是坚信好书有助于确保一个富有成效、道德高尚、秩序井然的共和国——好的阅读促进了公共利益。
汤姆·格林（Tom Glynn）生动、深入研究了纽约市公共图书馆一个半世纪以来的历史，阐明了阅读的公共和私人功能如何随着时间的推移而改变，以及共享藏书如何为公共和私人目的服务。阅读公众研究书籍和阅读如何帮助构建社会身份，以及印刷品如何在群体内部和群体之间发挥作用，包括但不限于社会经济阶层。作者提供了一个通俗易懂的学术探索，探讨了共和党和自由主义价值观、对“公共”和“私人”的理解转变，以及关于小说的辩论如何影响了18世纪和19世纪纽约市公共图书馆的发展和特征。
公众阅读是对纽约市社会和文化史的重要贡献，它将纽约市早期的公共图书馆牢牢地置于美国阅读和印刷文化的历史之中。
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Reading Publics: New York City’s Public Libraries, 1754-1911
On May 11, 1911, the New York Public Library opened its “marble palace for book lovers” on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. This was the city’s first public library in the modern sense, a tax-supported, circulating collection free to every citizen. Since before the Revolution, however, New York’s reading publics had access to a range of “public libraries” as the term was understood by contemporaries. In its most basic sense a public library in the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries simply meant a shared collection of books that was available to the general public and promoted the public good. From the founding in 1754 of the New York Society Library up to 1911, public libraries took a variety of forms. Some of them were free, charitable institutions, while others required a membership or an annual subscription. Some, such as the Biblical Library of the American Bible Society, were highly specialized; others, like the Astor Library, developed extensive, inclusive collections. What all the public libraries of this period had in common, at least ostensibly, was the conviction that good books helped ensure a productive, virtuous, orderly republic―that good reading promoted the public good.
Tom Glynn’s vivid, deeply researched history of New York City’s public libraries over the course of more than a century and a half illuminates how the public and private functions of reading changed over time and how shared collections of books could serve both public and private ends. Reading Publics examines how books and reading helped construct social identities and how print functioned within and across groups, including but not limited to socioeconomic classes. The author offers an accessible while scholarly exploration of how republican and liberal values, shifting understandings of “public” and “private,” and the debate over fiction influenced the development and character of New York City’s public libraries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Reading Publics is an important contribution to the social and cultural history of New York City that firmly places the city’s early public libraries within the history of reading and print culture in the United States.
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