"Library history still offers the professional historian and the professional librarian an opportunity for pioneering scholarship," concludes Kenneth E. Carpenter in Readers & Libraries: Toward a History of Libraries and Culture in America, which has just been published by the Library of Congress.
Mr. Carpenter, assistant director for research resources at Harvard University Library, calls for a new collaborative history of libraries and their role in American culture, a history that relates libraries to American intellectual, social, cultural and political life.
Readers & Libraries was presented as a lecture on Sept. 25, 1995, at the Library of Congress under the sponsorship of the Center for the Book. In his preface, Center for the Book Director John Y. Cole notes that the center will help facilitate the development of the new history that Mr. Carpenter proposes in his lecture.
Readers & Libraries is a stimulating statement of "what needs to be done, and why" in American library history. A 39-page booklet designed for the Center for the Book by Patricia Inglis, it is available in the Library of Congress Sales Shop for $3.95. For information call (202) 707-0271.
The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress was established in 1977 to stimulate public interest in books, reading and libraries. Its program, which is supported mostly by private funds, reaches into every region of the country through a network of 32 affiliated state centers and more than 80 national educational and civic organizations.
Robert Hass to Open Florida Literary Arts Center
On Dec. 11 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Poet Laureate Robert Hass will present the inaugural program at the Bienes Center for the Literary Arts at the Broward County Library. He will be introduced by Center for the Book Director John Y. Cole. The new center, established through a gift from Dianne and Michael Bienes, is "dedicated to celebrating the literary arts and preserving special collections and rare books." Mr. Hass's appearance is sponsored jointly by the Florida Center for the Book, located in the Broward County Public Library, and the LC Center for the Book.
"Marks in Books" Conference at Yale
The Center for the Book is joining the Bibliographical Society of America and Yale University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library in sponsoring an international invitational conference at Yale University on Jan. 27 concerning marks of provenance in books. The keynote speaker, Bernard M. Rosenthal, will describe his experience in collecting and researching early books with manuscript annotations. For infor-mation, contact Roger Stoddard, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 01773, telephone (617) 495-2441, fax (617) 495-1376, e-mail stoddard@fas. harvard.edu.
New Book Celebrates Montana's Literary Heritage
The Montana Center for the Book recently published Writing Montana: Literature Under the Big Sky, a collection of essays that "analyzes, argues with and celebrates" Montana's rich literary traditions.
"Montana's literary community is even more diverse, contentious and lively than we had dreamed possible," say editors Rick Newby and Suzanne Hunger in their preface. Writing Montana features 27 essays by leading Montana fiction writers, poets, scholars of Montana literature, journalists and historians. It "ranges widely over Montana's literary terrain, with special attention paid to the legacy of The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology (1988) and to relatively ignored subjects: the writers of eastern Montana, Native American literature, genre fiction, folk literature and the works of Montana's women writers."
The book's essays include studies of individual writers, survey articles, essays on Wallace Stegner, cowboy poetry and other topics, and 10 essays discussing the state's literary culture and the ways the rest of the world views "the last best place."
A 360-page trade paperback, Writing Montana sells for $19.95. It is distributed by Falcon Press, telephone (800) 582-2665, and may be purchased in bookstores throughout the United States. All profits from the sale of the book go to support the programs of the Montana Center for the Book.
Publication of Writing Montana was made possible, in large part, by support from the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress; the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, which provided a grant to fund the Center for the Book's "Literary Heritage of the States" project; the Montana Committee for the Humanities; the Billings Gazette; and additional gifts and in-kind contributions from individuals and businesses in Montana.
Program Officer Maurvene D. Williams represented the LC Center for the Book at a publication party for Writing Montana on Sept. 21 at the Holter Museum of Art in Helena.
"Idaho by the Book" Literary Map Published
The Idaho Center for the Book, located at Boise State University, and the Idaho Council of Teachers of English have just published Idaho by the Book, a "tetra-tetraflexagon" literary map of the state. The map, according to Idaho Center for the Book director Tom Trusky, is "a comprehensive look at the unfolding of Idaho book culture" that includes "photos of authors, presses, books & bookstores, libraries & curious quotes, facts & some literary attitude."
This unusual two-page literary map is available for $9.95, plus $3 for shipping and handling, from the Boise State University Bookstore, 1910 University Drive, Boise, ID 83725, telephone (800) 992-TEXT (out-of-state) or (208) 385-4031 (within Idaho), fax (208) 385-3401.
In other news from the Idaho center, Director Trusky recently announced that a bequest from the estates of Vardis and Opal Fisher has enabled the Idaho Center for the Book to become the "home" of all writings by Idaho writer Vardis Fisher (1895-1968). Through a special arrangement with the University of Idaho Press, Fisher's fiction and nonfiction works will be reprinted in hardcover and paperback editions, with revenue from the sales benefiting the activities of the Idaho center. A prolific and powerful novelist, Fisher also headed the WPA's Idaho Writers and Historical Records Survey projects and thus was responsible for the publication of the first WPA state guide, Idaho: A Guide in Word and Picture (1937), as well as The Idaho Encyclopedia (1938) and Idaho Lore (1939). For information about the Fisher project, contact Tom Trusky, telephone (208) 385-1999, or the Boise State University Bookstore, telephone (208) 385-4031, fax (208) 385-3401.
